Switched Up
by Looka'sMagicHell
Summary: After PP. Ever since the Disasteroid, Sam Manson's life is perfect; yet she wishes time would slow down. However, Paulina Sanchez's life is far from perfect. Sam and Paulina don't have much in common - except for that one wish they make at that one night, wishing they had each other's exceptional lives. And so they have wished it... So it shall be. (Full summary inside!) COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Wooo! Hey guys. So, I'm writing another one. Yep. I wonder how badly this could go...

Anyway, I've had this idea for a really, really long time, but never had time to actually work on it and write it down. (Ugh. School). So, I thought I'd just write it and finish it (hopefully) over the summer like I did with Trapped In School. This story is kind of weird, and I hope you like it regardless. Enjoy!

This is told from a third party's point of view - meaning, mine. No first person in this one! It's actually kind of a refreshing change since Trapped In School and Shipwrecked were written mostly in Sam's POV.

**Full summary:** After PP. Sam Manson's life is perfect - she and Danny are finally together, there's no more secrecy, and Danny Phantom is now a worldwide hero. But some part of her can't help wishing for life to slow down just a little. Paulina Sanchez's life is far from perfect. Every since stupid Danny Fenton revealed himself to being the town and now world hero Danny Phantom, her dreams of ever being with him were crushed, and her popularity had been overshadowed by his ever since. Sam and Paulina don't have much in common, that's for sure - except for that one wish they make at that one night, wishing they had each other's exceptional lives. And so they have wished it... So it shall be.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom, Butch Hartman does (the lucky bastard) BUT I do own the idea of this plot. So, here we go!

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Samantha Manson woke up to sunshine hitting her eyes.

The first thought that crossed her mind was, How the hell did the sun get into my room?

She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the sudden light. Sam never woke up to the sun. Ever. The only time the sun was allowed in her room in the morning was when her obnoxious parents barged in and opened the curtains.

Her eyes focused on the figure lying next to her, and she remembered. She'd been too busy last night to remember to close the curtains.

Danny Fenton's onyx black hair was messy and flying in many places, hanging over his forehead. His expression wasn't twisted into a grimace of pain like it'd been last night, but a peaceful look was on his face as he slept.

Sam still forgets sometimes that Danny was all hers. Every since his secret got out and the entire town knew who Danny Phantom was and after he saved the entire world, the fact that she and Danny were now a couple was the thing that still surprised her most every time. Sure, the fangirls and the paparazzi were a mildly more shocking discovery every day – and an annoying one – but as she gazed at her boyfriend of 6 months now, all she could think of was his serene presence next to her on the bed.

She almost flew in the air in shock when, eyes still closed, Danny said, "Stop staring, Manson, it's creepy."

She relaxed into the mattress after her initial shock and chuckled. "Way to ruin the romance, Fenton."

He responded by wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her even closer to him, tilting his face down so that he could capture his lips in hers. Sam twisted away so that he ended up kissing her neck, turning her back to him. "No way, Danny, not with your morning breath."

"What morning breath?" Danny struggled to get her to face him again, and in the process he started tickling her. Sam laughed and fidgeted under his grip.

"Stop!" She laughed, bending her body forward to try and curl into a ball and get his hands off of her. "Danny, stop tickling me!"

"Not until I get my kiss," he said, kissing her hair, her neck, her cheeks, trying to get to her mouth. "Quit moving, Sam!"

Even though Danny's full concentration was only trying to get himself a good morning kiss and loosened his grip on her a bit and stopped tickling her, Sam was still laughing, enjoying how his lips felt on her skin.

"Sammy-kins?" she heard someone knock on her door, and the doorknob twisted. "Are you up?"

"Shit," Sam instinctively shot up, kicking Danny in the process, which sent his groaning ass from the bed and onto the floor in one swift movement. Danny landed onto her carpeted floor with a thud just as her mother entered her room.

Instead of the usual grin she always wore, her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. "What was that ruckus?"

Sam cleared her throat so that her voice wouldn't come out sounding too high. "What ruckus?"

Sam's mom looked around the room cautiously. "I thought I heard a ruckus."

Sam paused, and then, inwardly smirking, said, "Can you describe the ruckus?"

Her mother didn't understand the reference, and instead shook her head, sitting down on the bed next to her. "Anyway. Good morning, sweetie."

"Um. Yeah. Good morning," Sam's attention was diverted from the woman on her bed to the invisible idiot trying to move across her room to get his things without making any sounds.

"Aren't you going to get ready for school?" her mom seemed nervous – fidgety, even, and Pamela Manson may have been a lot of things – elegant, pristine, annoyingly cheerful 24/7, obnoxious; but she was _not _fidgety.

"I was going to in a minute," Sam tried not to make it obvious as she watched Danny lift his discarded shirt from on the ground and turn it invisible with him. Even after all of this time, he still kept his clumsy nature, so he'd bumped into her dresser, the door to her closet, was going to knock over a bottle of her perfume yet saved it from that fate, and her floorboards creaked under his feet in the process.

"So, Sammykins," her mom cleared her throat, drawing Sam's attention back to her. "There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Sam said absent-mindedly.

"So, as we all know, you and Daniel have been getting very serious lately," Mrs. Manson was looking everywhere but at Sam, her hands on her lap, playing with a diamond bracelet around her wrist. "And, well, I was wondering if you had any questions or… _concerns_ about you and Daniel." Mrs. Manson must've noticed the absent-minded look on Sam's face, though misinterpreted it to mean another thing completely. "I know it's awkward to talk about, but even though you might think you have some feelings for him, some feelings that you don't understand, you must never let a boy pressure you into doing some… _things_ that you don't want to do."

Sam's head snapped to her mother immediately, her attention finally on her. "What?"

Sam could see that Danny had frozen too, as she saw the indent his feet made on her plush purple carpet. "Look, I just want to make sure that you understand that the decisions you make in that area with Daniel; these decisions could affect your life forever. Do… Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

Sam could only think: oh my God. My mom is trying to have the sex talk with me. Concerning Danny. _While Danny was in the room_.

"Sammy, sex is–"

"Oh, my God, mom," Sam could feel her cheeks heat up all the way down to her neck, and she got up from the bed. "Is there really nothing else you want to talk to me about at 6 am?"

"I just thought–" Sam's mom looked confused, especially more so when Sam grabbed her arm and helped her up and off the bed gently.

"You know what," Sam turned frantic, trying to get her mom out of her room as fast as possible. "We can talk about this later today. Or tomorrow. Or never. You know, whichever suits your schedule."

"But I–"

"Okay, thanks mom, love you, bye!" Sam slammed her bedroom door in her mother's flustered face. Sam took a few deep breaths, trying to calm her embarrassed heart down and to clear the splotches of red on her cheeks.

She turned to her room to find Danny visible again. "So, uh," Danny gestured to his shoes, which he had grabbed while she wasn't paying attention. "I guess I'll see you at school in a few."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Sure."

They said nothing else, standing in their awkward silence, unable to swim around it or through it.

The thing is, even though Sam and Danny had been together for a really long time, they hadn't exactly gotten to the point in their relationship where they… let's say _took it to the next level_. They never actually talked about it, but there was always tension around the particular topic whenever one of their makeout sessions was taken a bit farther than usual. For some reason, they'd always pull back, afraid to cross into that new territory none of them knew about.

Well, Sam always drew back. Danny was a guy – he couldn't draw back even if he'd wanted to.

"So," Danny rubbed the back of his neck, as he always did whenever he was nervous. "Thanks for, um, for patching me up last night."

Sam recalled him knocking on her window late at night with bruises and cuts all over his chest and nearly winced. "Of course. Thanks for staying."

Danny nodded. After a few more moments of awkwardness, Danny gestured with his hand to her window. "I should go."

"Yeah. See you at school." Sam said, forcing a smile. Danny walked over to her and finally got his morning kiss, went ghost, then was out of her room in mere second. Sam groaned and banged her head against her door.

So much for romance.

* * *

Tucker was rambling about some mayor thing that went wrong that morning at school when he cut himself off and said, "Okay, what the hell is with you two?"

The trio was sitting in the cafeteria during lunch. Even though Tucker Foley was now the mayor of Amity Park, he still wanted to complete his high school education first. (I know. Everyone was shocked too).

"Nothing," Sam instantly said, getting up to throw out her tray as the boys followed. They started heading to their lockers as the bell rang, signaling the end of their lunch period. "So, are we still on for tonight?"

"Oh, crap," Danny grimaced. "I'm really sorry, Sam, but my parents want me to come to this press conference thing with them."

"Oh, right, I forgot about that," Sam vaguely remembered something about a press conference and raging adoring female fans. Okay, so maybe all she remembered was the crazy female fans.

"I'll make it up to you," he told her, and right then, his ghost sense went off. "Starting tomorrow." He kissed her on the cheek and went ghost in the middle of the hallway. "Later, guys."

As he took off through the ceilings, few students looked his way. It'd taken a few weeks for all of the student body of Casper High to finally accept the fact that loser Danny Fenton was hero Danny Phantom, and a few more weeks for them to get accustomed to the fact that he will have to fight ghosts on school hours as well as other hours of the day. All of the teachers gave him excuses about missing classes and neglecting a few assignments, which was a bonus Danny thoroughly enjoyed. However that did not mean that Sam wasn't kicking his butt when it came to doing his homework and studying for his exams.

Once they reached her locker, she turned to Tucker and said, "What about you, Tuck?"

"Oh, I can't either, Sam," Tucker gave her a sympathetic look. "I have a lot of things I need to do in City Hall. Being a mayor may have a lot of perks, but it's still a tough job that needs to be done."

Sam nodded, trying to hide her disappointment. "No, it's okay, I get it." The warning bell rang, and while Sam had AP Biology, Tucker had to go to English. "See you later, Tuck."

They both headed their separate ways to their separate classes, and the halls weren't crowded enough for Sam to stop thinking. Even though life had drastically changed since the Disasteroid, most of it to the better, Sam still felt nostalgic to the old days when it was only her, Danny's, Tucker's and Jazz's little secret. And yes, even though she and Danny weren't a couple back then, they still spent more time together than they did now. She knew Danny had promised her that however hectic his life turned out to be he'd still include her at every step of the way, and he still kept faithful to that promise, but at some days, she couldn't help but be doubtful. Disregarding all the paparazzi, press conferences, TV appearances, all of his adoring fans, the only thing that bothered Sam the most was time. Time was slipping through their fingers; the time they spend together, the time they don't, the time they were wasting…

Even though she convinces everyone otherwise, sometimes all Sam wants is to live a quiet, normal life. Obviously, she gave Danny grief when he'd decided he wanted the same thing a million years ago before the Disasteroid was about to hit Earth – how she didn't want to live life on the sidelines. But after a long time of being in the spotlight – or being buried behind the world hero Danny Phantom and the town mayor Tucker Foley and she, a mere shadow in the background – she was growing very tired of the craziness of everything.

She just wished everything would quiet down from this crescendo and settle into a barely audible hum like–

Sam was too lost in thought that she didn't see her until they crashed into each other. None of them were knocked to the ground, but Paulina Sanchez was furious enough from the impact to say, "Watch where you're going, Goth freak! Jesus."

Paulina shoved her shoulder as she strode away, off to her boring class with her boring friends to her now-boring life after her life had been overshadowed by Danny's and her popularity dimmed to just being 'that hot Latina girl'.

Sam shook her head and continued towards her class.

A boring life like Paulina's, she decided.

* * *

**A/N:** Eh, kind of boring first chapter, but all great things come to those who wait, right? Right? (Silence). Okay. No readers to this story yet to laugh at my poor lame jokes. Sorry.

So... Review and tell me what you think! Keep in mind that the actual story hasn't started yet, so stay tuned ;). Review! xx


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **Okay, so I'm gonna admit, the first two chapters aren't really the interesting parts of this story because the story hasn't even been dived into yet, so bear with me; I promise it'll get better soon!

**Disclaimer**: I'm seriously asking - do I have to write this disclaimer in every single chapter? It's getting really old. But anyway. Idon'townDannyPhantom. There.

* * *

**Chapter 2**

Even though Paulina Sanchez had worn her tightest jeans, her lowest V-neck, her best push-up bra, had her hair curled and perfectly flowing past her shoulders down to her mid-back, and was wearing heels that could cut diamonds, no one spared her a second glance.

She glared at every head that wasn't turned her way. Ever since the Disasteroid, a lot of people went a little crazy in their heads and realized that there were more important things in life than popularity and big boobs.

Needless to say, Paulina was furious ever since.

She entered her English class, and noticed the Techno-Geek-turned-town-mayor already in his seat. The seat in front of him, where his best friend Danny sat, was empty.

Paulina took her seat and tried not to fume. More people entered the classroom, and her best friend Star took the seat next to her. "Wow, Paulina," Star beamed at her enthusiastically. "I love the shoes."

Pauline absent-mindedly glanced down at her brand new Louboutin's. "Thanks," she muttered darkly, not in the mood for getting her ass kissed, even though that was not Star's intention. A few guys from the football team entered, including her ex-boyfriend, Dash Baxter.

Paulina had only made two mistakes in her life, and they were: dating star quarterback Dash Baxter, and breaking up with star quarterback Dash Baxter. Paulina had started dating Dash after she found out that the love of her life Danny Phantom was actually the loser Danny Fenton, and after many weeks of denial, broke up with Dash because there was nothing Dash could do to fill the space in her heart that was empty. Oh, and also because he was annoying as hell and was the worst kisser. Can someone even drool while kissing someone?

"Hey, babe," Dash took his usual seat in front of her and turned in his seat. She noticed how his eyes trailed down to her chest and then back up to her eyes. "Looking fine today."

"We broke up, Dash," Paulina rolled her eyes, pretending not enjoy the linger of his eyes on her cleavage. "You shouldn't call me babe anymore."

"Okay, not allowed to call you babe," he grinned flirtatiously at her. "But am I still allowed to check you out?"

Paulina was about to say 'and then some' when Mr. Lancer walked into class, and said, "Dash, if you'd please stop being inappropriate in my classroom and face the front board then I would deeply appreciate it, thanks."

A few snickers were heard, causing Paulina to redden with embarrassment, sitting up straighter and pulling her top up as Dash turned around. Mr. Lancer set his papers down on his desk and then faced the classroom. "Alright class. Now, if we could all just settle down–"

He was cut off when the classroom door burst open and a very misshapen Danny Fenton walked in. He gave Lancer an apologetic look and said, "Sorry I'm late, Mr. Lancer."

The way he was limping and the cuts on his face told everyone that he'd just gotten back from a ghost fight, but even though he looked like shit, he greeted Tucker with an easy smile and took his seat.

"Dear God, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer's eyes widened. "Do you need to go to the nurse? You look terrible."

"Nah, you should see the other guy," Danny instantly replied, earning him a few chuckles from a lot of students.

"Daniel–"

"I'm fine, Mr. Lancer," Danny grinned good-heartedly. "Really."

Lancer looked reluctant to leave Danny looking like that, but he started the class anyway.

"Dude," she tuned out Lancer and focused with Tucker, who leaned forward in his seat to whisper to Danny. "Who messed you up?"

"He did not mess me up," Danny glared at his best friend. "The Box Ghost must be on steroids or something."

Tucker couldn't hide his laughter. "The _Box Ghost _did this to you?"

"It's not _that_ bad," Danny rolled his eyes. "Stop being so dramatic."

"Well, at least it's a good look for tonight's conference," Tucker smirked.

"Ugh, don't remind me," Danny grimaced.

"Hey," Paulina's attention was snapped away from them to her side, where Star had softly kicked her foot. "Stop staring, babe."

Paulina glared at her and directed her attention to the front of the class, looking at Lancer without really seeing him. She got lost in thought, not caring about whatever Lancer was blabbing about.

For the first time in her life, Paulina felt jealous. She was jealous of Danny's life, how he was always under the spotlight, how everyone instantly tended to him and cared about him and all the attention he was still receiving even after all these months since the Disasteroid.

No, scratch that. She didn't envy Danny's life because it wasn't Danny's life she wanted. She didn't want to _be _Danny; she wanted to _be with _Danny.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes at herself and wondered how the tables have turned.

She wanted the Goth freak's life.

* * *

Sam decided a walk would do her good.

She'd been sitting on her bed for the past two hours, not able to still her thoughts and focus on her homework. Taking AP Biology proved to be a very big mistake, since it was time-consuming and Sam wasn't even spending time on it yet. So after not being able to force all of the names of the cardiovascular diseases she needed to know – was it cardio-something infarction or atherosclerosis that had something to do with the coronary artery? – she decided she was tired of lying in her room all day, got up, put on her boots, grabbed her jacket, and went out.

During this time of night, the air was calm and still. It was that time during the year in March where spring was rolling in, so that the weather wasn't too hot or too cold.

Subconsciously Sam found herself in front of city hall, where she thought Tucker was probably holed into some office in there doing some of his mayor duties. Looking ahead, she saw the Danny Phantom statue. The moon illuminated it, and Danny stood tall and proud, carrying the world in his hands. Whoever designed the statue had even captured the determined never-back-down look in Danny's eyes.

Sam smiled to herself and wished Danny was here with her. She sighed, and then sat down on the base of the statue, resting her back on Danny's feet.

She tried not to wonder about what Danny was doing, instead focusing on the blinding camera lights and the annoying, too-personal questions the press was probably asking. She tried not to think about all the pretty girls who were probably there, adoration lacing their features as they daydreamed about Danny in their arms.

Sam didn't know what the hardest part about his fame was, and she wasn't up to thinking about every single one of them and determining which was worse. She knew she was in a bad state, and figured she was just probably PMS-ing, but she couldn't help the words she'd accidentally blurted out. "I wish I had a boring life where I didn't have to worry about my boyfriend being charmed by another girl. She'll probably be European." She sighed, realizing she was about to ramble out loud, which would only make her look crazy – well, crazier than she already was, sitting at the base of a statue. "I wish I had a life like Paulina's pathetic one."

Unbeknownst to her, said pathetic girl was sitting on the other end of the statue, staring off into the night, her hair ruffled by a slight breeze in the air. She had reached her lowest point that night, eating a bar of chocolate even though she was supposed to be on a diet. She shook her head at the pathetic life she know had, and said, "I wish I had Sam's life. She must be happy. Perfect boyfriend. Perfect life. Perfect everything."

At the last word, she flung the chocolate wrapper into the air. The wind carried it, circling all the way to the other end of the statue until it hit Sam's face.

Sam shot up, accidentally banging her head on Danny's leg, reaching for the wrapper on her face. She got off the base and stared at the chocolate wrapper as it ruffled between her fingers. "What the hell?"

She heard a shuffling behind her and turned to see who other than a stunned Paulina staring at her. Paulina instantly hid whatever pathetic expression had been on her face and glared at her. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Sam let the wrapper fly with the wind, noticing the small chocolate stain on Paulina's lower lip.

"Please," Paulina folded her arms across her chest and sneered at her. "Like I have anything to say to you."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

"Yeah. Whatever, loser," the two girls turned their backs on each other and walked away.

Sam hated Paulina and hated herself even more so for ever wishing to have a life like her's. Paulina was nothing but a stupid bully and Sam couldn't believe she ever thought her life was something worth wishing for.

Paulina stalked away from the Danny Phantom statue and from his loser girlfriend, cursing at herself. How could she even let herself for one second want something like that freak's life? Sure, Danny Phantom was her boyfriend, but that was nothing Paulina couldn't fix. She couldn't believe she actually uttered the words out loud that she wanted what Sam had.

If only the girls would've come to that realization sooner…

* * *

Up on the Earth carried by Danny's hand, a figure appeared out of thin air, a grin on her face.

"Oh," Desiree grinned. "This is going to be a fun one."

"_So you have wished it, so it shall be_."

* * *

**A/N:** Ha ha ha ha this IS going to be fun xD. I can't wait to see where I go with this...

Review! x


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom. But you knew that already. *sighs* Disclaimers are boring...

* * *

**Chapter 3**

That next Saturday morning, Sam woke up with a tight feeling in her chest. She didn't need to give herself some time to adjust to consciousness to remember what had happened last night. She inwardly groaned and turned to her side, hiding her face in her pillow.

She hit something soft, like fur, that she was sure hadn't been on her bed last night when she'd slept. Opening her eyes, she saw a small, brown teddy bear lying next to her on the pillow. She grabbed it in her hands and looked it over with tired eyes, wondering how the hell something like that had gotten onto her bed. For the fraction of a second she thought that maybe Danny had bought it to her and left it there as a present. But there was no note, and the teddy didn't even look like it was new.

She threw the teddy on the ground and groaned, deciding she was putting off the inevitable and should get up already. She felt absolutely horrible about the night before; wished everything in order to get it back. But she forced herself to sit up, dragging her feet to the ground.

Wait a minute.

She blinked a few times. Something was wrong. As she looked down on herself, she realized she was wearing a sleeping gown. Sam never wore sleeping gowns, yet this one was black and slick, tight yet comfortable around her body, hugging her hips and her… wait a minute, were her boobs always that big?

Sam rubbed her eyes, trying to make sense of what was happened, and stood up. She opened her eyes to the sunlight, and for the first time realized that she was not in her room. Her room did not have Coldplay and One Direction posters on the walls. Where was her record player? Why was her bed big and fluffy and _pink_? Her room definitely did not have pink walls like this one did.

What the hell was going on?

* * *

Paulina woke up the next morning with a killer headache, and the first thing she noticed was how relaxed her muscles were. She frowned to herself, wondering how her muscles weren't tight and contracted as they always were thanks to cheerleading practice.

Must've been that stupid bar of chocolate, she thought darkly. She sat up and sat on the edge of her bed, yawning and stretching. The minute she opened her eyes, she realized something very, very wrong.

Not only was she wearing pants – Paulina never wore pants as she slept – but her room… was not her room. Even though her curtains were drawn, and the room was strewn in darkness, she did not feel the normal familiarity of her room as she did every morning when she woke up. Just to be sure and still her racing thoughts, she got up and headed to the window. Was that a window seat? Paulina didn't have a window seat.

She drew the curtain back, letting the light in, squinting at the sudden brightness. Outside, she did not see her back garden and her pool glimmering with the sun as she should have. Instead, her window was facing the street.

She held her breath as she turned from the window to the room. The room was still dark. The walls were purple, the bed was covered in a black duvet, and the entire floor was covered with a plush purple carpet. Where were her posters? And her dresser was not that small.

She froze as she stared at the dresser as the light bounced off the mirror. She took tentative steps closer, the light still shielding her reflection, and she neared the mirror just as Sam, miles away in another house, walked over to the dresser as well, ignoring all of the strewn makeup and nail polish on it.

Sam looked into the mirror, and saw the face of Paulina Sanchez.

The light finally blocked behind her back, Paulina looked into the mirror, and saw the face of Samantha Manson.

Both girls screamed.

* * *

Somehow, they both knew exactly where to go. So a few minutes of running hysterically later took them both to the Danny Phantom statue, where they'd been the previous night.

The minute Paulina – well, Sam – well, Paulina in Sam's body – saw Sam – Paulina – you know! – she jabbed a finger in her face and exclaimed, "You! What the _fuck _did you do!"

"_Me_?" Sam glared at her. "You think I have anything to do with this?"

"Last time I checked, I went to bed in _my body_, and woke up in yours," Paulina snarled. "So yes, I _am_ blaming you, you freak!"

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Sam was starting to get really, really pissed off, and that drowned out the horrifying fact that she was yelling at herself – her body. "You think I _wanted _this to happen? You think I wanted to wake up in your body? Please, Paulina, you are the last person on Earth I would want to wake up in their body."

Paulina retaliated and the both of them went at it, screaming and yelling at each other, incoherent curses and fingers jabbed in each other's directions. After a while of doing this, Sam finally said, "Okay, okay, stop!" Paulina pursed her lips, and even though she was breathing hard from all of that yelling, she glared at her silently. "Look, fighting and screaming about this isn't going to fix it. We need a plan."

"What we need is to figure out how the hell this happened," Paulina said. She started thinking, scratching the top of her head, shocked at first because her hair wasn't as controlled as it should've been and was flying in every direction. Her gaze trailed to the statue they were standing at, and it was like a light bulb went off in her head. "The statue. The statue made it happen!"

"Paulina, what are you saying?" Sam said in exasperation. "That is a statue and it can't do anything."

"Oh, no, we were both here the last time we were together and in our own bodies," Paulina had this wild look in her eyes – Sam's eyes – as she stared at the statue. "This is like what happens in the movies. Somehow this statue heard us bickering and decided we should walk in each other's shoes and then we'd get to appreciate each other and then bam! We'll be back in our own bodies. I know what you're up to, statue, and it isn't going to work! You are going to switch us back before I teach you a–"

Sam could only stare at Paulina, yelling like a maniac at the statue of her boyfriend, and wonder why, oh why, couldn't it have been anyone, any other person on earth, than Paulina Sanchez.

Sam tried to drown out the sound of Paulina's yelling – her voice yelling – to think. It was no coincidence, she knew, that the night she wished she had Paulina's life was the night before she woke up to be in Paulina's body.

And then it hit her.

She groaned and smacked her forehead. "Desiree."

Paulina, miraculously, heard her above all of her screeching. "What did you say?"

Sam sighed. "It's a ghost–"

"What?" Paulina turned panicky, looking all around her. "Ghost? Where?"

"No, you idiot," Sam again cursed the universe. It just _had _to be Paulina. "A ghost did this."

"Why would a ghost do this?" Paulina asked. "_How_ can a ghost do this?"

"There's this ghost, Desiree, and she's like a genie. She makes wishes come true."

Sam was about to elaborate in shame about her lack of judgment the other night and her wish, when Paulina's eyes widened and she squeaked. "Holy crap. I did this?"

"Wait," Sam frowned. "What?"

"Okay, so in a stupid state of mind and probably a worse state of mentality I kind of sort of wished I had your life." Paulina said in one breath. "But if you, ghost, are listening, I wish I hadn't wished that and I wish for my body back!" When nothing happened, Paulina glared at Sam. "We need to find that ghost."

That was the only thing they agreed on that day. So, ignoring the fact that both of them were still in their pajamas, their hair was unkempt and they looked like absolute shit, they started heading towards Fenton Works, where Sam said Danny's parents had a ghost tracker that could detect any ghost's signal, and that was how they could find Desiree.

Throughout the entire walk, Paulina would not stop talking. She was complaining about the current events, how she just had to be born into a town infested with ghosts, why she couldn't have just been born in LA as Tom Cruise's younger sister, blah, blah, blah.

They were at the park and only had a few more blocks to go but Sam was so close to blowing her head off. She hated every fiber of Paulina Sanchez. That included Paulina talking.

Sam was about to slap Paulina so hard that she would get whiplash when her attention diverted to the park. There, some people were running, and in the field she saw Danny as Phantom fighting with a ghost.

Desiree.

"Shit," Sam pulled Paulina quickly and they hid behind the first tree and bushes they saw. Throughout all of what was going on, Sam was _not_ going to let her boyfriend see her like this. Her own body and herself in Paulina's.

"What's going on?" Paulina finally spotted where all the commotion was coming from, and her eyes widened.

Apparently, they'd arrived at the end of their fight, and so Danny had finally pulled out the thermos, and said, "Desiree, I wish you'd stay still and get into the damn thermos!"

Desiree glared at him. "You can't tell me what to do–"

She was cut off as she screamed as the thermos sucked her in and Danny capped it. As usual, as it had been since the Disasteroid, those who had been in the park applauded for Danny. He ignored them, and Sam knew he always felt weird when people did that, and flew away.

"Sam." Both girls had stayed unmoving throughout the whole ordeal, and Paulina hadn't looked away from where Danny had been a few moments ago as she asked, "Was that her?"

Sam couldn't trust her voice, so she uttered a small, "Yep."

Paulina glared at the sky where the Desiree had just been sucked into the thermos. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

* * *

**A/N:** Sorryy it's a short chapter; but I kind of think short chapters are a good thing because they mean faster updates ;3. Hope you like this so far! Reviewww x


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** Ahem, okay, so I know I promised faster updates, but I was out of the house for the entire weekend - I actually have a life now, woo! - and couldn't get a minute to finish this chapter. But here it is! Enjoy!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 4**

"We _have _to tell Danny," Paulina was rambling as the girls continued their walk to Fenton Works. "He's Danny Phantom, for Christ's sake; he'll know what to do. Sam? We're telling Danny."

Sam stopped walking, finally coming to terms with a decision. Paulina noticed, and turned to her. Sam looked straight into her own eyes and told Paulina, "No."

"No?" Paulina scoffed. "What do you mean no?"

"I mean, we're not telling Danny," Sam continued walking calmly. "He's my boyfriend and I say whether we tell him or not."

"Are you on crack, freak?" Paulina exclaimed. "We're not talking about telling him whether you're pregnant or not. Jesus, do you even understand the implication of this situation?"

Sam raised her eyebrows, more surprised at the fact that Paulina was able to use more than four-syllable-words in one phrase, but she said nothing.

"Sam, the only person being put on the line of shame and embarrassment is me because I'm the one who made the stupid wish," Paulina grumbled. Then she realized. "Wait a minute. The only reason you wouldn't want to tell Danny what happened is if you're too embarrassed to tell him. And the only way you'd be too embarrassed…"

Sam stared at Paulina out of the corner of her eye, both perplexed and angry at how she was able to figure it out so quickly. When Sam said nothing, Paulina gaped. "You wished for the same thing, didn't you?" Sam didn't answer. "_Didn't you_?"

"Look, that's not the point now," Sam felt her face heat up with embarrassment and she hated herself even more than she did last night. "The point is fixing this. I don't plan on staying like this for a long time."

Paulina, surprisingly, dropped the subject and instead said, "But now that Danny got the ghost, what's the point of going to his house again?"

Sam then went into the process of explaining to her what happens to a ghost after it is captured as they walked over to Danny's house. Surprisingly yet quite unsurprisingly, Paulina had never even known about the existence of the Ghost Zone until then – "What? We don't exactly take the protocol about how to handle ghosts in school." – until Sam had informed her of it then.

Ever since the Disasteroid, the Fentons spent a few weeks repairing the Ghost Portal. Ghosts had somehow been able to get out of the spontaneous portals that opened up at random with no way for Danny to get them back into the Ghost Zone without Frostbite's map, so his parents fixed the Ghost Portal in order to help him. However, they did not upgrade it so that ghosts would not come out of it. They still did.

Paulina and Sam reached Fenton Works, and paused at the doorstep. Paulina turned to Sam. "If you don't want to tell Danny, what are we gonna do to get in, get to the portal, and get that genie ghost without telling Danny?"

Sam smirked at her, and on Paulina's face it looked as devious as it could be. Sam bent down, removed the edge of their Welcome rug, where a key was placed. She grabbed the key and turned the lock with it, and the door opened with a _click_.

Paulina raised her eyebrow sardonically. "Isn't that kind of dangerous? And how do you know about it?"

"I'm his girlfriend," Sam said in a 'duh' tone. They entered the house silently, Sam checking inside for anyone first. Once she realized the coast was clear, she signaled Paulina in after her and closed the door silently. She tried to listen to any sounds in the house, but heard only silence, which was odd in the Fenton household, since the house was always bustling with loud noises and the sounds of new ghost gadgets, so Sam deduced that no one was home. Still, she and Paulina took soft steps towards the basement, making sure once again that no one was down there, and headed towards the portal.

Sam saw the thermos on one of the work tables, its cap unscrewed, and she knew they were in trouble. Paulina was gaping at the sight in front of her, taking in the work benches, the scrap metal, the Specter Speeder parked on one end of the basement, and most of all the Ghost Portal, open and swirling in greens, casting bright lights all over the basement floor and walls.

"Well?" Paulina said once she got over her initial shock. "Is she still here or what?"

"Um," Sam rubbed the back of her neck, thinking about their next move. "He ejected the thermos and Desiree is now in the Ghost Zone."

Paulina's eyes widened. "You mean… in _there_?"

Her eyes were fixed on the portal, the swirling green ectoplasmic entrance illuminating the otherwise dull grey basement.

Sam sighed. "Yes. In there."

Paulina looked like she was about to have a fit, but she took a deep breath and calmly said, "What do we do now?"

Sam eyed the Specter Speeder parked in the corner, and she got an idea. She turned to Paulina and said, "Okay, so here's the new plan. I go into the Ghost Zone in that," she pointed to the Specter Speeder, "find Desiree, and wish for our bodies to be switched back."

Paulina blanched. "What? No way. No _way_ are you going in there."

Sam, at first, was a little bewildered and touched that Paulina was capable of showing concerns for Sam's wellbeing, when Paulina added, "You're not going into creepy ghost terrain in my body, Goth freak. No freaking way."

Sam rolled her eyes. "I've done it a million times before; it's no big deal."

"And then what, Sam?" Paulina said. "You wish for your body back, and then it's going to be _me_ out there in that Ghost Zone. How the hell am I supposed to get back?"

Sam inwardly cursed. She hadn't really thought of that. "You go in there with me," she decided. "We both go into the Ghost Zone, and once we make our wish, we'll switch back, and I'll still be there to guide us back. There. Problem solved."

Paulina paled even more, which was quite impossible on Sam's pale skin. "I'm not going in there."

"It's not so bad," Sam tried to convince her by smothering her with kindness, which was very hard yet very necessary. "We'll be in and out in no time."

Paulina was shaking her head vigorously. "I. Am. Not. Going. In. There."

"God, fine!" Sam exclaimed, getting tired of Paulina's scaredy-cat attitude and again wishing it were anyone else but her. "I'll go in there, find Desiree, bring her back here, we make our wish, and then I send her back into the Ghost Zone."

"Sam, I won't let you go into that thing in my body," Paulina had an annoyingly determine look on her face. "What if something happens to you? Then what? Not only will I be stuck in your body, but my body will be gone."

"Nothing is going to happen," even though Sam knew she was lying a little bit, she wanted to get her body back as fast as possible, even if it meant facing the dangers of the Ghost Zone alone. "Would you chill out?"

Paulina and Sam kept arguing, Paulina not budging about agreeing to send Sam into the Ghost Zone and getting Desiree. Sam thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever, since Paulina would only have to stand and wait and all the hard work will be done by Sam, but the Latina wouldn't budge.

"Okay, okay," after a while of useless arguing, Paulina raised both her hands in a surrender gesture. "I will agree for you to go into that thing in _my_ body." Sam was about to breathe a sigh of relief, when Paulina briskly added, "If Danny went in with you."

"I thought we agreed that we wouldn't tell Danny," Sam exclaimed.

"_No_, _you_ agreed that we wouldn't tell Danny," Paulina folded her arms across her chest with a triumphant look. "Not me."

Sam wanted to scream, especially because she saw the logic in what Paulina was saying, which only made it worse. Paulina stayed in the same stance, knowing she'd won the argument, and even though it was Sam's own body, she still felt like wiping that stupid smug smirk on her face.

"Fine," Sam growled angrily. "I won't go in there, but I won't tell Danny. What do you expect we do then?"

* * *

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sam echoed Paulina from earlier, horrified at what she was hearing. They were currently at Paulina's house, since Sam suggested that Danny could easily walk in on them through her window had they gone to hers.

"No, think about it," Paulina was trying to convince her something that was not going to happen in a million years, no matter what. "You said yourself that ghosts can find their way out of the Ghost Zone, so all we have to do is wait for Desire to get out."

"Desiree," Same corrected automatically.

"_Whatever_," Paulina was about to have a BF with the stupid Goth freak's attitude, but she refrained, knowing that it would do more bad than it would do good. "This way, you won't have to tell your stupid boyfriend, and I won't have to watch my fabulous body lost in a place full of ghosts forever."

"So what you're suggesting," Sam was fuming, but she tried to talk in a calm, cool tone, "is that we play along to our bodies, me pretending to be you and you pretending to be me, until Desiree finds her way out of the Ghost Zone and _then _ we make our wish?"

Paulina grinned. "Exactly."

"Do you understand what you're saying?" Sam was growing more frustrated by the minute. "You want us to spend even more time in each other's bodies, pretending to be one another when we don't know a thing about each other? Oh, and have you forgotten that we kind of _hate each other's guts_?"

Paulina hated her alright, that was undeniable. "What else do you suppose we do?" Paulina got that defiant look in her yes again. "Unless you want me to go find your boyfriend…"

Sam sighed, finally tired of all the bickering. She pursed her lips, milling the idea over in her head. Then she looked back up at Paulina. "You really want to do this?"

"You see any other option?" Paulina folded her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrows at her, and Sam hated the fact that she looked convincing in her own body.

Sam sighed for the umpteenth time that day. "Fine."

* * *

**A/N:** Yay. Fun. Hahahahahahahahahaha I'm going to enjoy this.

Review! x


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** Okay so the only reason I'm not updating as fast as I want to is because.. Well, I forget. I'm 100% serious. I can type up the chapter like ten minutes after I just post one and then forget that I'm supposed to publish it when a day or two have passed. Hahahahaha oh God what am I going to do with myself

Anyway, before I start, I just wanna say a huge thank you to one Aurora Marie Williams, and her friends: Marie Delacroix, Kathleen Victoria Winters, HarleyQuinn1307, WhiteAngel43, and The Illumination! You guys just bombarded my e-mail - I CANNOT believe you reviewed on every single chapter. Together. Wow. Thank you guys so much! Kinda speechless x3.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own DP. Um, duh.

* * *

**Chapter 5**

Paulina grinned, and jumped up and down; clapping her hands, looking like even more of an idiot than she normally would've doing that in Sam's body. "Then we have a deal."

"But first," Sam got up from where she was sitting on Paulina's bed, "we need to set some ground rules."

Paulina nodded. "Agreed. First of all," she pointed at the nightgown Sam was still in, "Paulina Sanchez does _not _go out in public underdressed, without makeup, and without perfectly styled hair. So if I _ever_ see you out of this house looking like something the dog dragged in again, I will shoot you."

Sam glared at her. "Fine. Then you can't go out of _my_ house dressed in anything but black or purple, and if I even glimpse a hint of color on my cheeks, eyes, lips, clothing, shoes, or even undergarments, I will shoot you right back."

Paulina pursed her lips. "No acting like the usual loser Goth freak you are in front of my friends."

Sam scoffed. "No calling me a loser or a Goth freak anymore."

"I can call you whatever the hell I want," Paulina retaliated. "Got that, freak-a-zoid?"

"Huh," Sam smirked. "Sam Manson calling Paulina Sanchez names in front of the entire student body. That's gonna work well for your reputation, won't it?"

Paulina hesitated, her entire body tensing as she thought about it. Then she grumbled out a "Fine."

They stood there glaring at each other, neither saying a word. Then Sam said, "You are not allowed to touch any part of my boyfriend. You are not even allowed to _think_ about touching my boyfriend. You won't hold his hand, or kiss him, or even _smile_ at him in a manner that I won't like. Get it, Latina?"

"Yeah, _that's_ going to work," Paulina said sarcastically. "If I'm supposed to act like you, that includes being all lovey-dovey with your boyfriend, or else he'll notice something's wrong and start asking questions." Paulina smirked, realizing she was going to get exactly what she wanted, which was exactly what she was best at. "And you wouldn't want Danny to figure out what's going on, now, would you?" When Sam tensed, Paulina continued. "I mean, I wouldn't mind going to him right now and telling him everything that happened, including you wishing you had somebody else's life, somebody that you hate, whose life does not include him in the picture. Would that be what you want?"

Sam narrowed her eyes at the girl in her body. Gritting her teeth, she barely got the words out of her lips, "Fine. You get to act like his girlfriend. But nothing more than necessary. Nothing more intense than a little French kiss in the park. No making out with him. And remember really well, Paulina: Danny Fenton is _mine_. Get it?"

Paulina smirked, the rules she just said entering one ear and going out of the other as Paulina started forming her own plan in her head. "Alright, Goth freak." When Sam gave her a look, Paulina shrugged innocently and added, "What? No one's around. I can call you whatever I want."

And so it began. Sam started filling her in on all the things she should know to be able to act like she was Sam: Sam's wardrobe, her frequent input of sarcastic remarks, how she was an Ultra-Recyclo vegetarian – she didn't really appreciate when Paulina started laughing hysterically, and then when she noticed the look on Sam's face, she uttered, "Wait, seriously?" – and gave her a brief introduction to her parents and the way her house is run.

When Sam was done, it was Paulina's turn to start elaborating about her life. She went through her usual routines about her friends, her cheerleading duties – which Sam stared at her in horror throughout her entire description – her wardrobe changes throughout the day, and the best lines she could use to get out of going out with Star.

"And remember," Sam wanted nothing more than to clean her ears out after all the toxicity she'd just heard, but she forced herself to remain in her seat and to listen to Paulina continue, "always say no to flats. Heels aren't even an option, they're a necessi–"

Paulina was interrupted by a large boom of an electric guitar slicing through the air. Paulina blinked in shock and said, "What the hell is that?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "That happens to be my phone ringing," she humphed when Paulina got out her phone from her pajama pocket.

"It's Danny," Paulina said after checking the caller ID. "What do I do?"

Sam snatched the phone from her and slid the answer button. "Hey, Danny."

"Um," Danny hesitated on the other end. "Who's this?"

"_Shit_," Sam lowered the phone from her ear and covered it with her hand so that Danny wouldn't hear. "He knows it's not me."

Paulina scoffed, "That's because I have a hot Latin accent and you don't, loser. Give it to me."

Paulina held out her hand, and Sam had to physically force herself to hand her phone over to her. Paulina brought the phone to her ear and said, in a flirty voice, "Hey babe."

Sam face-palmed herself. Hadn't Paulina been listening to any word Sam had just said? Paulina's expression even faltered a little at whatever Danny had said and she forced a nervous laugh. "Did I say babe? I meant Danny."

When Sam glared at her, Paulina waved her off with her hand. "Oh, you want to hang out today?" When Paulina glanced at Sam, Sam waved her arms everywhere, shaking her head at her. Paulina rolled her eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry, Danny, I can't today. I, um… Have to go… Shave my legs."

Sam wanted to dig up a hole and die.

"Toodles!" Paulina didn't even wait to see how Danny reacted before she hang up and turned to Sam with an expectant look. "So? How'd I do?"

"Babe?" Sam started, glaring. "Shave my legs? _Toodles_?"

Paulina threw the phone on her bed and started heading to the bathroom. "Nothing ever pleases you Goths."

"Hey, where are you going?" Sam yelled after her when she disappeared into a door in her room that Sam had never been in before.

"I'm going to take a shower," she heard Paulina yell as her pajama pants were thrown into the room. "I can't stand myself right now. By the way, you see that curler on my dresser?"

Sam eyed said curler. "Yes?"

"Try and curl your – well, my hair – the way I showed you until I'm done," she said. Sam rolled her eyes, but headed over to the dresser and plugged in the curler anyway, and started trying to get acquainted with the weird appliance.

Ten seconds hadn't even passed when she heard a scream. Startled and almost burning her cheek with the curler, Sam dropped the thing really fast and yelled for Paulina. "Paulina! Are you okay?"

"_No_!" Paulina then walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. And she was naked. "Look at this! I have no tits!"

Even though Sam was staring at her own naked body, the same body she saw every single day, she still blushed. "Would you put some clothes on!"

"That won't even make a difference because I have nothing to hide! I. Have. No. Tits."

Sam was starting to get very offended and pissed off. She folded her arms across her chest and said, "There's nothing wrong with my breasts."

"They don't even exist for something to be wrong with them," Paulina looked at Sam in despair, as if the world was ending.

"Okay, that's enough," Sam glared at her, and then threw one of the towels arranged by her bed at Paulina, which Paulina caught and wrapped around herself reluctantly. "Go take your stupid shower already."

"But, but," Paulina stuck out her lower lip and looked at Sam with wide eyes. "Can you just take off your nightgown for one second?"

Sam gaped at her. "Why?"

"I just want to see my babies for one last time," Paulina was staring at Sam's – well, her – chest with such longing Sam almost felt sorry for her.

"You're sick," Sam said. "You know that?"

Paulina was still grumbling as she trudged towards the bathroom again, and Sam caught her saying something like, "How do you even live like this."

Once Paulina had finally turned the shower on and Sam was sure she wouldn't walk back into the room, Sam sat on the edge of the bed, and held her head in her hands, wanting to burst in tears.

Instead, she grabbed her phone again and sent Danny a text message saying she was sorry and trying to justify why she hang up on him like that, telling him that she was sick and was the reason she was acting weird. Danny texted her back immediately telling her to get better soon, putting a smile on Sam's face and really wishing she had her body back and really regretting that she'd wished for another life in the first place. What was another life if Danny wasn't in it? She didn't understand how anyone could live without a Danny Fenton in their life. Danny Phantom was the world's hero, but Danny Fenton was hers, and she missed her hero already. She didn't know where the thoughts of wanting a different life had come from; she knew how cynical and downright awful of a person that made her. That was why she felt like she couldn't tell Danny. She'd rather have him see her tiny chest – as Paulina had emphasized – and be mortified by it than be mortified by this.

Sam was knocked out of her thoughts when she heard another scream coming from the bathroom. Knowing what to expect this time, Sam rolled her eyes and prepared herself for the answer. "What is it now?" Sam yelled.

"Where'd my tan go?" She heard Paulina yell. "And my tattoo! Oh God!"

Sam frowned, getting back up and trying to continue curling her hair. "You have a tattoo? Where?"

When she didn't get an answer back, Sam really, really, _really_ wished it would've been anyone else but Paulina Sanchez.

* * *

**A/N:** It's odd, really; usually I couldn't stand the thought of short chapters with nothing but dialogue but that's what this story looks like. It's fun to try new things. Hope you like it too (x

Review! x


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **I remembered to update this time! Woo!

Okay, so before I start, I just have a question to ask: does anyone have any idea what Sam's grandma calls her? I remember it starts with a B and is spelled something close to 'buble' or something but I can't remember EXACTLY what it is. So, if any of you have a clue what that word is, let me know!

**Dislcaimer:** Don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 6**

"Are you ready?" Sam asked as she and Paulina stood in the courtyard in front of the doors of Casper High School.

Paulina took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded. "Ready."

Sam didn't even want to look down at herself. She and Paulina spent the weekend moving from one house to another, Sam trying to acquaint Paulina with her house and Paulina with hers as much as they could without drawing suspicion to themselves. They faltered many times along the way, like the time Sam's grandma had rolled into the living room while Sam was showing Paulina around, looked at Paulina and said, "Hey there, Sammy. Who's your friend?" And Sam, in Paulina's body, had responded instead of Paulina, greeting her with a "Hey grandma, this is Paulina." Needless to say, the confused and slightly scared look on her grandmother's face was enough to tell Sam how bad the consequences would be if either of them ever messed it up with anyone else.

Anyway, Sam and Paulina had spent all hours of the day together the past two days, and each learned how to talk like the other, do the same expressions as the other as much as possible over the past 44 hours they'd spent together. Paulina even stayed over at her own house with Sam so that they could get up together in the morning and get ready together.

When Paulina had woken Sam up at 5 am, Sam's first instinct was to yell at her and say, "Why the hell are you waking me up so early? We don't need to be in school for another three hours!"

Paulina had scoffed at her and forced her off the bed. "How long do you think perfection is achieved? It doesn't take just ten minutes!"

That morning, Paulina had done Sam's makeup and showed her what she should do every morning. She'd dressed Sam in a white, tight, tank top, a tiger printed miniskirt, and black Chanel heels. Sam's hair was curled perfectly all the way down to her mid-back, her eyelashes had so much mascara on they reached her eyebrows, and gloss coated her lips.

When Sam had looked at herself in the mirror, she refrained screaming, remembering exactly who she was supposed to pretend to be.

Paulina, on the other hand, was even more horrified at what Sam had done to her that morning. She was wearing a black tank top, a leather skirt that reached her mid-thighs – which was the only thing Paulina was thankful of – green tights with lacy patterns on them, and Sam's trademark combat boots. Her wrists were adorned with metal bracelets and chains, and her hair was straightened and half of it pulled up. Paulina couldn't even keep her eyes open from how heavily it was coated with black: eye shadow, eyeliner, and mascara. She almost had a fit when Sam applied the purple lipstick and almost ran over to the Ghost Zone herself, but refrained.

And so they stood, the most unlikely of allies, in the wrong bodies, in front of Casper High School.

Sam shook her head, eyeing the heels on her feet. "I can't believe I'm doing this."

Paulina shrugged, trying not to focus on the odd lightness in her body and her hair. "We got this far. Can't turn back now."

Sam frowned down at her – her heels carried her a few good inches above her own body, and Paulina was taller than Sam to begin with. "You're oddly optimistic about this."

Paulina shrugged, trying to keep her face as blank as possible. "Acting as the loser Goth freak for a few days until we find the bitch that did this to us? I'm an actress, sweetie. Piece of cake."

* * *

Trying to be Sam Manson was _not _a piece of cake.

That was the first lesson Paulina learned during the first ten seconds she'd spent at her locker. Danny had walked up to her without her noticing and stolen a kiss on her cheek, and Paulina was so surprised, thinking it was Dash, accidently elbowed him in the ribs.

Danny bent forward, groaning. "Oh my God," Paulina panicked immediately, blushing. "I'm so sorry. I thought you were someone else."

Danny looked up from his bent position, pain twisting his features. "Who did you think I was? You have another boyfriend roaming these halls?"

Irony was very dark, and at that particular moment Dash came walking through with some of his football buddies, laughing about something. Paulina looked away from Dash and back to Danny with an awkward laugh. "Haha. Never mind."

Danny straightened, rubbing the place she'd elbowed him in. "I see you're feeling better."

"What?" Paulina blinked at him.

"You know," Danny said, "you told me you were sick?"

"I did?" Paulina frowned, and from the look Danny gave her, she figured Sam had somehow told him. "I mean, yeah, I did!" She faked a cough, and added, "I'm better, still recovering."

Danny frowned at her. "Are you okay, Sam? You're acting a little weird."

"What? Moi?" She laughed nervously again. "I'm absolutely perfect. Anyway, I wouldn't wanna be late to class; see ya, bye!"

She bolted from her locker and started speeding to the ladies' room, leaving Danny standing back there with a confused look on his face. He eyed the unopened locker and said aloud to himself, "She didn't even get her books…" His face twisted into more confusion as he added, "Did she just say _moi_?"

Sam walked into the bathroom after she got off the phone with Paulina, unable to wipe the smug look off her face. School hadn't even started yet and already Paulina was freezing under pressure, and Sam couldn't help the satisfaction she felt, even if it was compromising their plan.

Sam had already entered the ladies' room before Paulina did, and when she did, she glared at the freshmen in the bathroom and in a demanding tone said, "What are you still doing in here? Get out!"

Sam stood there and gaped as the freshmen eyed her as well and scurried out of the bathroom like squirrels. Paulina kicked the door closed behind them and walked over to where Sam was standing by the sink counter.

"Paulina!" she hissed at her. "That was rude!"

"You think it was rude coming from me, it's supposed to be characteristic coming from you," Paulina jabbed a finger in her face, then she turned to the mirror, took a deep breath, and then let it out. "Look at this. I hate this." She then turned and eyed Sam enviously. "Look at the piece of trash I am and the piece heaven you are."

Sam couldn't resist anymore and raised her fingers to flick her across the nose. The sound emanated in the empty bathroom, and Paulina gaped, her face twisting in pain. "_Ow_," she said, just for emphasis.

"Would you stop being a superficial bitch for one second and focus?" Sam glared at her, and if looks could kill, especially in Paulina's body, Paulina would've spontaneously combusted right there and then, regardless whose body she was in. "This isn't something you can say you're going to do and then realize you don't like it and just quit. This is real life and this is serious."

"Don't you think I know that?" Paulina glared right back, and Sam had to admit, both of their faces made the perfect glaring expressions. Paulina was about to say something else when the door to the bathroom opened and someone was about to walk in.

Paulina turned to her with the same murderous expression. "Do. You. Mind?"

The girl's eyes widened and she practically ran out of the room. Paulina turned back to Sam and said, "Okay, do you see? Do you see why it's hard for someone like me to be someone like you?"

Sam sighed, and rubbed her temples. She knew she was right. The minute Sam walked into school and walked towards Paulina's locker, Star had magically materialized by her side, bombarding her with weird questions; "Oh my God, is that a new skirt?" "Does this top make my neckline look weird?" "If I get a shot of Botox now, would that affect my IQ?" Sam almost shot herself, and she was very surprised that she could find someone who talked even more than Paulina and said even stupider things.

Sam had zoned out, lost in a reverie where she'd thrown both Paulina and Star to the sharks and screamed bloody murder, so almost jumped into the air when Paulina stomped her foot and exclaimed, "That's it. I'm telling Danny. We need to switch back; _now_."

Sam's eyes widened and she jumped into action immediately. Paulina had reached the door and pulled it open, but didn't get far when Sam screamed, "No, wait!" and launched into the air. It was quite funny, actually; like things had slowed down and were happening in slow motion. Paulina looking back at Sam horrifyingly as Sam's body – well, Paulina's body – was hurled into the air at her.

And then time sped back up as the two girls collapsed, Sam knocking Paulina over so that they both lay sprawled on the tiled floor, kicking and screaming.

"You crazy freak!" Paulina shrieked, trying to push Sam off her but failing. "Get off me! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Stopping you from ruining everything," she gasped out, trying to pin Paulina down, but Sam knew her own body, and she knew that at one point or another Paulina would be able to push her off. So she rolled off her, got up, and pulled her legs, Paulina screaming all the way.

Sam then jumped on her once more, pinning her successfully down to the floor. "Paulina, listen to me! Do you want to be humiliated in front of him? Didn't you like have a crush on Danny Phantom for a really long time? Do you really want to look bad in front of someone you wasted so much time pawning over?"

Paulina reached out to smack her, but Sam titled her face, so Paulina ended up pulling her hair. "How dare _you_ think that this is about _me_? The only reason we're still in each other's bodies and not telling Danny is because _you're _the one who's too humiliated to face your boyfriend and admit to him that you wished he wasn't in your life!"

"I did _not _wish for Danny to be out of my life!" Sam was finally able to remove Paulina's hands from her hair and pin them back on the floor. "I just wished that–"

They heard the bathroom door creak open, and simultaneously, both girls looked up and found a random girl frozen at the entrance, one leg in front of the other, her eyes widened at the sight in front of her; Sam Manson sprawled on the floor with Paulina Sanchez on top of her, pinning her hands down.

Both girls glared at the intruder and in unison yelled, "_Out_!"

The girl couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Paulina and Sam stayed unmoving in their positions, replaying back the girl's terrified face as she ran from the bathroom. Sam then looked down on Paulina, and they couldn't contain it.

They both burst out laughing.

Sam was laughing too hard to keep a firm grip on Paulina and so she fell down on the floor and lied down on her back next to her. "Did you see the look on her face?" Paulina laughed.

"She looked like she'd just seen a scene out of _The Hunger Games_ or something," Sam added, unable to keep the grin from appearing on her face.

Once the girls calmed down, their laughter diminishing to smiles and their smiles diminishing to blank stares at the ceiling, they finally looked at each other. Paulina sighed first, and said, "Sorry I called you a piece of trash."

Sam shrugged. "Sorry I tackled you."

Paulina echoed the shrug, smiling a bit. "It's okay. Your body's actually really strong; I barely felt a thing. And that's a lot coming from a cheerleader."

They chuckled slightly, and then looked back up at the bathroom ceiling. After a few more moments of silence, Paulina blew out a breath and said, "So. What now?"

Sam, ignoring the ache on her scalp and the ache in her legs from all that fighting, sat up and looked down at Paulina. "Now we stop acting like babies and get shit done."

* * *

**A/N**: I feel like I'm going nowhere with this story, but it's just too fun to quit. Like, I can't find any significance in its existence in this fandom other than the pure fun I just get from writing it. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing...

Anyway, review! x


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** I don't know why I'm writing an author's note since I have nothing to say.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom (WHY)

* * *

**Chapter 7**

When Paulina rejoined her body's boyfriend and best friend later that day during lunch, she was prepared.

"Hey Danny," she laid a soft kiss on his cheek as she took a seat next to him, and smiled at the techno-geek, trying to make it look as genuine as possible. "Hey Tuck."

"Hey Sam," Danny was eyeing her warily; as if afraid she'd grow fangs and start sucking his blood. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," she said. "Sorry about this morning. Guess my, um, sickness was acting up."

Tucker had been fiddling with something on his PDA, but at her words he dropped it to the table and stared at her. "What sickness?"

"It's a very rare sickness called shut up or the techno-geek gets a boot up his ass," Paulina couldn't help retorting. When she realized what she'd just said, she blinked and almost covered her mouth with her hands, but refrained.

Tucker blinked at her, and she thought she was screwed, but then Tucker shook his head and muttered, "Always the center of the combat boots; Jesus."

She heard Danny chuckle behind her, and he said, "What did that poor kid ever do to you?"

Tucker had taken a huge bite out of his sandwich, so when he looked up to talk to her, food was flying in every direction. "You know, as mayor, I could banish your ass from Amity Park."

"And then Danny would kick your ass out of Amity Park," Paulina grimaced. "And didn't anyone ever teach you it was rude to talk with your mouth full?"

He swallowed, took another bite from his sandwich, and leaned closer to her across the table, chewing with his mouth open.

Paulina almost threw up in her mouth. "You disgusting freak."

She thought she screwed up again, but Tucker just grinned, leaned back, and said, food still in his mouth, "Thank you."

Paulina couldn't believe it. She was being very mean with both of these guys – well, mostly the techno-geek – and they were not only accepting it, they were playing along. Like it was natural.

As the boys delved into their food, she shook her head. Had she ever said something like that with her friends, they wouldn't have laughed – they would've gotten very twitchy and scared and shut up right away. That was what Paulina did. She put everyone in place and reminded them who was boss. But with Danny and Tucker… she couldn't put them in their place even if she tried because that's not what they thought she was trying to do. This was how friends actually acted? They were mean to each other and laughed about it?

"Hey," Danny bumped her with his shoulder softly, noticing the look on her face. "Everything okay?"

Oh damn. Paulina had been prepared for loser jokes, being Danny Fenton/Phantom's girlfriend, getting up and dressing like a Goth every morning; but she had not been prepared for kindness and people who genuinely cared about her. Well, cared about the person they thought she was.

She smiled at Danny warmly. "Everything's fine. Now."

And it was a refreshing change.

* * *

One of the things that thoroughly freaked Sam out about being Paulina was her friends. Paulina's friends were not her friends… it was like they were her pawns. The only person who was immune to this constant fear she felt around everyone was Star, for whatever reason that was beyond her.

These people were always careful before they spoke, tip-toeing around her, as if saying the wrong word would end in their termination. She knew she was probably being overdramatic, but she couldn't help but be freaked out.

Currently, it was lunch time, and she was sitting at the popular table, a place she thought she'd never be sitting in. Around her clustered cheerleaders and some guys from the football team, Dash on one side and Star on the other. She kept nervously looking over at Paulina sitting with Danny and Tucker, just to make sure everything was okay.

"–I knew I was the one who was right all along, anyway. Right, Paulina?"

Sam snapped out of her reverie and turned to the brunette who was talking to her – her name was Britney, she thought – all of the girls' names were too Mary Sue for her to remember all of them; Ashley, Britney, Tiffany; very unoriginal if you asked her. Sam blinked at who she thought was Britney and said, "What?"

"Please, Brit," another cheerleader rolled her eyes. "As if she cares."

Britney quieted down in her seat, her expression downcast as she turned her attention back to her salad. At least that was the only thing Sam was grateful for – all of the cheerleaders only ate salads, so she wouldn't have to endure eating meat, even if it wasn't her body it was coming through.

Even though Sam hadn't even said anything, she could feel everyone's concentration on her and how they were cautious about her reaction to anything. The table was loud and bustling, football players and cheerleaders forming the loudest, most cheerfully obnoxious mix – even louder and more obnoxious than her parents, she decided. At her side, she felt Dash pinch her softly to steer her attention to him.

"Hey," he whispered, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at her. "I smuggled the keys of the janitor's closet. We have about twenty minutes until he realizes they're gone. You in?"

It took Sam a few moments to understand what he was insinuating, and when she did, her eyes widened. "Really? Here? At school? _Now_?"

Dash frowned at her look of confusion. "Um. Yes. Here. Now. Like all of the last times? Remember?"

Sam had to close her eyes and mutter out a disgusted "Ugh", knowing that she would never wipe the image of Dash and Paulina going at it in the janitor's closet from her head. She looked at Dash disgustedly and said, "In your dreams. Besides." She got up from her seat. "We broke up. Remember?"

She started carrying her tray to throw it in the bin, not being able to stand sitting, smothered in that table anymore. She ignored all the stares she was receiving as she stalked away from the cafeteria and into the hallways. There were still twenty minutes left to lunch, and she headed over to the ladies' room, where she'd just been that morning.

Luckily though, when she entered, no one was there. She walked over to the sinks and stared at herself in the mirror. Paulina stared back at her, and for the millionth time, she wished it just could've been anyone else.

She shook her head at her reflection. It wasn't just that she hated Paulina. It was the fact that Paulina's life was so different from hers – her friends weren't her friends. She didn't know how anyone could live like this. What if something happened and she needed to talk to someone? Who would she call? Star? She almost snorted out loud just thinking about it. Star was the dumbest airhead on the planet, and probably had the emotional range of a teaspoon.

For the first time in her life, as she looked back up at the mirror again, she didn't hate her reflection. She felt sorry for it.

* * *

Once school was over, Sam and Paulina had agreed on meeting up back at the Danny Phantom statue. They decided that that would be their meeting point, since meeting up at each other's houses was too risky. If anyone saw them fraternizing, people would ask questions that they couldn't answer, especially Danny and Tucker.

Sam had arrived there before Paulina did, so she sat on the base of the statue, waiting. When Paulina finally showed up, she had the biggest smile on her face, which just looked unfamiliar and weird on Sam's face.

Sam jumped off the base and met Paulina halfway. Before she could even talk, Paulina said, "If I don't get an Oscar at the end of this, then what am I even living for."

She didn't even wait for Sam to ask what she meant when Paulina launched into an explanation about her day. She told her how she was able to perfectly fool Danny and Tucker and how for once in her life being a bitch was actually a good thing – Sam just thought she was indirectly offending her by saying that, but said nothing to interrupt her. After a while of rambling, Paulina ended her entire speech with, "I didn't know why I thought I couldn't do this. I'm Paulina Sanchez, for God's sakes." She smirked, not even looking at Sam anymore. "I can do anything."

Sam stayed quiet, keeping what she really wanted to say in her head. On one hand, she was thrilled, because if they could keep this up, then she and Paulina would get their bodies back in no time as if nothing had ever happened. On the other hand, she felt oddly disappointed that Paulina was able to fool Danny and Tucker so easily. They'd known each other for years, and they didn't even notice when Sam wasn't Sam?

"What's up with you?" Paulina folded her arms across her chest and gave her a look. "Why do you look like someone just ran over your puppy? Wait, let me guess. You're a cat person."

Sam could handle evil Paulina; she could handle self-centered and self-absorbed Paulina; but she found that it was very difficult to handle friendly, chatty and cheerful Paulina. So instead of divulging more about her mood, she instead said, "Actually, I'm just feeling very tired, so I think I'll just go home and take the day off."

Sam was about to walk off, but her path was blocked by Paulina. "What do you mean take the day off? It's Monday."

"Yeah," Sam raised an eyebrow at her. "So?"

Paulina rolled her eyes. "You have cheerleading practice, dummy. Did you forget?"

Sam scrunched up her face into a grimace. Great. As if her day could get any worse.

* * *

**A/N:** Are my chapters getting more boring? Eh. I don't know. We'll see where this goes... Honestly I just have this one scene in my head that I'm DYING to write but it isn't a scene I can rush through - it's just sort of that climatic scene in the story; so this story was actually based upon that particular scene. Let's see if you can remember my A/N's and try to guess the scene when it comes, just to keep things interesting x3.

Please revieewww x


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 8**

Sam really hated cheerleading.

It wasn't just the idea behind cheerleading that she hated, or the stupid skimpy outfits, or how it was a ridiculous excuse for a sport, or how much individuality she felt like she was surrendering for just being in a practice that she shouldn't even be in. It was getting knocked on the ground like she was a volley ball. Over. And over. And over.

On her sixth fall, this time because during one of her twirls she lost her footing, the cheerleading coach, Coach Wilson, blew her whistle and stomped onto the mattress Sam was lying face-down on. "Alright, Sanchez," Coach Wilson folded her arms across her chest. "What the hell is wrong with you today?"

Sam got her butt off the mattress and stood up, regretting it immediately when the room started spinning. Trying to ignore the stars blocking the coach's face, she said, "Sorry, coach. I guess I'm a little out of it today."

"Yeah, well, being 'out of it' doesn't get the routine done, now, does it?" Coach Wilson glared at her, and Sam almost cowered under that glare. Sam once thought that Ms. Telstaff was scary and intimidating. That was before she'd met the cheerleading coach. Melissa Wilson was a thirty-something year-old woman, was built like a super model yet walked like the hulk, her whistle always the weapon between her thick lips and a constant glare on her face. She could even give Skulker a run for his money.

She blew said whistle again and returned back to where she was standing. "Back to position 3."

Sam wiped the sweat off her forehead and got back in line where she was supposed to stand. A couple of guys on the team whom she didn't know the names of started carrying her and preparing her for the toss.

_She just had to be a freaking flyer_, Sam thought darkly.

They expected her to execute a perfect Arabesque, which was apparently her specialty, but so far all she managed to perfect was hitting her ass on the mattress. The bases beneath her helped her get up, and even though she concentrated really hard standing up on their hands, simultaneously trying to form her flyer position, twirl in place in the air on their hands and maintain her pose, the minute she was in the air, she catapulted all the way back towards the mattress.

She and the mattress were actually becoming very good friends now. She was even thinking about taking it home with her.

Coach Wilson blew her whistle angrily. "Take five, guys. Sanchez, a minute?"

Panting, Sam tore her aching muscles up and towards the coach. She was sweating all the way through her gym clothes, and her hair, which she'd spent almost an hour curling to perfection that morning, was now clinging to her skin in wet threads.

She didn't need to look in a mirror to know she looked like shit.

"Yeah, coach?" she asked tentatively, mentally bracing herself to what she knew was coming.

"I don't even know what to say to you," Coach could do this thing where she could glare at you and yet stare at you calmly, and that was what she was doing right now, and it was not helping to calm Sam's speeding heartbeat. "If you don't get your shit together, Sanchez, we're going to have a few problems. You weren't elected captain of this team to decide one day that you were tired or that your muscles are too sore. This team looks up to you and expects the best, and we're all pretty disappointed out there. Do you think you just showed me your best?"

Sam wanted to say yes; because that was the only cheerleading activity she ever had to endure, but forced herself to say a small "No" instead.

"That's what I thought," Coach Wilson shook her head at her. "If you're not back in the game and back in your head in the next ten minutes, I might reconsider that captain position."

Coach Wilson walked away then. Honestly, Sam didn't care about cheerleading and whatever other cheerleading crap about losing her spot as team captain Coach Wilson had threatened her with. In fact, cheerleading was the last thing she cared about in the entire planet.

But what even killed her even more was that it was the hardest thing she ever had to do in her entire life.

When Paulina finally got her into the gym back at school, Sam hadn't been all too worried, because, hey, she practically spent 75 percent of her time fighting ghosts with Danny, and if she could fight ghosts, cheerleading practice was nothing, right?

Wrong.

Sam trudged back towards the bleachers and took a seat where she'd set her sports bag, and took a huge gulp of water from her thermos. She was about to get up and go tell the coach that she just wanted to go home for today when she heard a small hiss at her side.

Frowning, she looked to the source of the sound and found Paulina hiding between the crook of the entrance door to the gym, waving to her and signaling her while trying to be as inconspicuous as she possibly could.

Sam reluctantly dragged her aching legs over to Paulina. Once she was out of the gym and in the empty hallway, Paulina said, "You're shit at this."

Sam's instant reaction was to glare at her. "And you're captain of the fucking obvious."

Paulina rolled her eyes as response, and Sam added, "Paulina, I know _nothing_ about cheerleading. The only thing I know about it is how to make fun of it."

"Look, you're supposed to know this," Paulina said. "I mean, you _are_ in _my_ body, right? My body knows how to move and how to do all of those stunts, even if you, Sam, don't know how to."

"I'm _trying_," Sam argued. "I concentrate so hard on doing everything exactly like you told me to and yet I still end up on that stupid mattress."

"Maybe," Paulina looked like she just had a revelation. "Maybe that's the problem; you think too much. You're not supposed to think too much while you're doing a sport; you just do it."

Sam snorted. "Please, cheerleading is not a sport; it's a stupid excuse for girls to sacrifice their individuality and walk around scantily clad and call it a sport."

Instead of arguing, Paulina gave Sam a defiant look and raised her chin in the air. "That's what you were able to do it so easily, right?"

Sam shut her mouth instantly and her mood darkened even more. She could not take all of this in one day. She just wanted to sleep. And possibly beat something up with her combat boots.

She sighed, realizing the only way she'd get any closer to rest is to get through practice. "Fine. What do you want me to do?"

"Just… stop thinking," Paulina said. "Just don't concentrate on what you're trying to do in my body and just let my body do it for you. I've known these moves and perfected them for a long time; that's why I'm captain. Now you just have to let the stunts flow out of you."

Sam wanted to say that that was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard in her entire life, but didn't, not energetic enough to find a sarcastic retort to say. Instead, she rolled her eyes, trudged back into the gym, muttering darkly under her breath, cursing everyone and everything, starting with stupid Desiree who put them into this mess and ending it with the stupid Fentons for ever inventing the stupid Ghost Portal.

She made it back to the middle of the gym where the bases were waiting for her, Coach Wilson standing by the bleachers watching her like a hawk. She took a deep breath, and as she stared up at the ceiling of the gym as the guys started carrying her again, she stopped thinking and let herself go to their careful hands.

Seconds later, she was twirling in the air, and she _stayed_ on her bases' hands, her pose maintained, her stunt performed, the mattress untouched.

She couldn't help the overwhelmed laugh that escaped her as she bounced back on the gym floor, this time landing on her feet and not her ass. Coach Wilson said, "_That's_ what I'm talking about. Welcome back, Sanchez. I was wondering how long you'd be gone."

* * *

"Mmm," Paulina had just shoved a giant spoon of ice cream into her mouth and was closing her eyes appreciatively. "How I missed ice cream."

They were sitting in Sam's room that night, working together on their homework. They decided that Sam was going to do her own homework for her own classes and Paulina as well, only the other would turn it in according to the corresponding body. So as Sam bent over her AP French homework, which Paulina could obviously not help her in since the Latina took AP Spanish instead, she stared at the Ben & Jerry box between Paulina's arms enviously.

"Remind me again why you won't share," Sam said.

"Because," Paulina swallowed the large lump of ice cream in her throat, "you are a cheerleader, and you need to maintain your body mass, structure, and height, and eating ice cream messes with that entire process, because your metabolism is affected and the way your body works will change. Being a cheerleader is a complicated thing and your body is the essence of that complication."

Sam shook her head in wonder. "And yet you can't understand the concept of DNA."

"What? Sorry, I didn't hear you over the sound of Butterscotch," Paulina smirked at her, shoving another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

"I take it you don't live on the wild side of diets often," Sam raised an eyebrow at her.

"No!" Paulina grinned enthusiastically. "This is the first time in months I'd ever been able to eat whatever I want!" When Sam glared at her meaningfully, Paulina rolled her eyes and hastily added, "Anything that doesn't lie within the criteria of meat, I mean. Like, today I could eat French fries. Like, I totally love French fries."

Sam couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculous expression on her face. "Totally." She added sarcastically, and then said, "If being a cheerleader sucks so bad, then why do you do it?"

Paulina shrugged, staring down at the math book in front of her. "I love it. I love the way it makes me feel – when I'm flying in the air, when I'm dancing in front of an audience. It makes me feel special."

Sam said nothing at her answer, her mind tumbling over itself. Who knew Paulina Sanchez could be deeper than a puddle? Sam could get wet if she stepped into her after all.

They spent a few minutes of silence, each one concentrating on their homework. After a while, the silence was interrupted by a slight tap on the window.

Paulina's head snapped up first. "Did you hear that?"

The knocking came again, and a voice on the other end of her window said, "Sam, can I come in?"

"Shit," Sam instantly got off the bed. "It's Danny."

* * *

**A/N:** I actually LOVE cheerleaders - or the sport itself, which Sam would probably argue with. Cheerleaders are just so strong and flexible yet graceful and beautiful. I don't know, but if there was actual cheerleading in my school, I would've joined the team, even if I have the flexibility of a wooden plank xD. I think Sam learned that lesson today, though. Don't mock something you know nothing about!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter. Review! x


	9. Chapter 9

**Auhtor's Note:** *Blows trumpets and throws confetti* It's a PAAARTYYYY WOOO!

What? What are we celebrating? Do we have to be celebrating something to throw a party? Jeez.

Okay fine we're celebrating 100+ REVIIEWWSS WOOOO! Thank you guys so much - you're all awesommee! 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP but right now that doesn't matter cuz we reached 100 reviews yaaayyy

* * *

**Chapter 9**

Paulina gave her a panic-stricken look. "What the hell is he doing outside your window? Is this like an Edward Cullen sex thing?"

"Sam?" Danny's voice rang again, and Sam knew it was only a matter of time before he phased his head through to see what was taking her so long to answer him.

"Go, go," Paulina whispered. "Um, come in, Danny."

Sam hadn't gotten enough time to go anywhere, so panicking, she just dropped to her knees on the floor as Danny phased in, hiding behind the bed. She hastily tried to crawl under the bed as quietly as possible as she felt Danny's feet on the floor and heard him phase back to human.

"Huh," she heard him say from under the bed, seeing as his feet walked even closer to the bed. "Party for one?"

Paulina laughed nervously. "Um. Yes?"

Danny grinned at her playfully and got onto the bed, crawling up to her. "Can I join?"

Paulina couldn't help it. She smiled at him flirtatiously and said, "Are you prepared to pay the price?"

Danny raised his eyebrows. "What kind of price?"

The sound of their flirting was overshadowed for Sam, down under the bed, when she tried not to cough from all the dust that was getting her into her lungs. She almost ended up choking from stifling in her coughs for so long, and made a mental note to tell the maids to clean under the bed as well as around it once she got her body back. She tried to shift her position under the bed, and popped her head outside to see what was going on.

She almost compromised her hiding space to get up and peel Paulina from her boyfriend's lips.

She tried to calm herself down, and crawled back under the bed to get to the other side, where Paulina was leaning back. As discreetly as possible, she located Paulina's leg and pinched it.

Paulina jumped from the sudden pain, and she bumped foreheads with Danny, cutting off their kiss. Paulina glared at where she knew Sam was, rubbing the spot on her forehead. Danny chuckled, a little nervously. "Ouch."

"Sorry," Paulina muttered, trying to glare at Sam and tell her to back off while she dealt with Danny and tried to assure him that everything was okay. "I just… You're too far away. I need you closer."

From under the bed, Sam rolled her eyes and was already planning the million things she was going to yell at Paulina after this was over. None of those things were nice things.

Danny grinned at her, and pulled Paulina by her legs so that she was now lying on the bed, and fell on top of her gently. "Better?" he asked her in a low voice.

"Better," Paulina started kissing him again, which forced Sam to move halfway out of the bed and _really_ pinch her leg.

Paulina flinched but didn't jump this time, removing her lips from Danny. However, he used that distraction to bring his lips to her neck, trailing kisses from her jaw line to her ear down her neck. Paulina tried to ignore the tingling feeling his touch left on her skin and glared at Sam, who was out of the bed far enough to reach out and grab her hair.

Paulina glared at her with all her might and tried getting her hands off of her hair. Sam mouthed a lot of things at her, and she didn't have to pay attention to know she was calling her every name in the book. Paulina mouthed back at her, "What do you want me to do, just kick him out?"

Sam jabbed a finger at Danny, who was too busy trailing kisses to her shoulder blades, and then pointed at the window, making it very clear what she wanted Paulina to do. It had gotten harder for Paulina to ignore what Danny was going, so she waved Sam off and closed her eyes as Danny took her hand in his.

Sam narrowed her eyes and tried a different tactic. She got back under the bed, and noticed a loose nail that was jagging out. The tiny, thin nail was easy for her to get out of the wood, and she got out from under the bed again. Guiltlessly and without hesitation, she rammed the nail into Paulina's thigh.

Paulina jumped up again, this time yelling in pain in the process, unable to help yelling the words "Cut that out!" at Sam. Unfortunately, Danny thought no one else was in the room, and instantly stopped, a worried and terrified expression on his face.

"I'm s-sorry," Danny paled. "I didn't mean to–"

"No, no!" Paulina sat up. "I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to… myself." She made a list of things she would do to Sam for ever putting her in that situation, and then scrambled her mind for a way to get out of this as Danny stared at her with his confused puppy-dog eyes. "I wish I could stop being so distracted." She went with an 'I'm-tired' excuse, one that always used to work on Dash. "I'm sorry, I'm just really tired and can't focus on anything."

Danny's expression softened immediately. "Oh. Well, why didn't you just say so?" He sat up so that he was now sitting on the edge of the bed. He didn't notice when Sam hurriedly scattered out of the way of his oncoming feet and back under the bed.

"I guess I'm just really out of it," to emphasize it, Paulina waved her hand in the air over her head.

"Guess you're still a little sick," Danny removed a strand of hair that had fallen on her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. "You should sleep, Sam."

Paulina nodded. "Yeah. Yes. Totally."

Sam wanted to face palm herself. She just _had_ to add a touch of Paulina in a three-syllable-answer, didn't she?

"Okay," Danny, ever so tenderly, helped Paulina pull the covers over her, grabbing her ice cream bucket and closing it, putting it aside on her bedside table. He leaned over Paulina and gave her a soft kiss on the forehead. "Do you want me to stay?" He asked tentatively.

Paulina's eyes widened gratefully. "Of cour–" She got cut off when Sam had shoved the wood from under the bed, a pressure that Paulina felt as though Sam had thumped her in the back. Paulina cleared her throat, and said, "No, no, you don't have to do that. I, uh, don't want you catching whatever it is I have."

Danny nodded, smiling softly. "Okay." He got up, and changed into ghost. "If you need anything, call me."

He closed the lights for her, giving her one last smile, and then he took off through her window and into the night. Paulina had been pretending to lie still on the bed, but the minute she was sure he was out of eyesight and had flown away, she shoved the covers away, knocking over the many books that had been on the bed in the process as she got up. One of the books tumbled down on Sam's back as she was crawling from her under the bed, causing her to yell out a surprised "Ow!"

Paulina slammed the lights open and turned around to a very furious Sam standing up by the foot of the bed. "What the hell was that?" Paulina yelled first.

"Are you _kidding_?" Sam said. "The first rule I set for you, Paulina, _the first rule_."

"What was I supposed to do?" Paulina argued. "Tell him to get lost, that I didn't feel like seeing him for however long it takes for us to switch back?"

"YES!" Sam yelled, exasperated. "I don't care if you hurt his feelings for this little while; I'll be able to make it up to him once I'm back in my own body. But you are not allowed to do that for me!"

"UGH, FINE!" Paulina hadn't been lying when she'd told Danny she was tired, and even though she was far from done with this conversation, she was done with it tonight. "We'll talk about that later–"

"There is no talking about it later," even though Paulina knew that Sam was as tired as her, Sam wouldn't drop the subject until her point was made clear. "There is the fact that you will listen to what I say and you will listen to me when I tell you that whatever you were about to let happen between you two a few minutes ago should never happen again."

"What's the big deal?" Paulina said, growing tired from staring into Sam's enraged face and decided she would pick up the discarded books. "It's not like it's something you haven't done before."

She realized that Sam had been too quiet for too long to just be taking a pause, and when she looked up back at Sam from the books she'd just placed on the desk, she narrowed her eyes at her in realization. "You've never done it, have you?"

Sam's face turned crimson, but she maintained her angry expression. "Whether we did or not, that is none of your business."

Paulina couldn't help it. She laughed. "You've been together for _months_ now and you'd known each other for years, and you still hadn't even slept together yet? I mean, I know you were Virgin Mary for years, but I didn't think you'd still be a prude after all this time."

"We are not going to have this conversation," Sam didn't appreciate Paulina's jokes very much. Not at all, in fact. "You will drop this. And you will drop trying to convince me that it's okay for me to give you the freedom of kissing my boyfriend, because that won't happen."

Paulina slammed a book on the desk just to show her that she wasn't happy. "Fine. I'll stop spicing up your sex life."

"My sex life is none of your concern," Sam spat back automatically. "I don't need you trying to spice it up."

Paulina snorted, heading back to the bed and crawling under the covers. "Spoken like a true Virgin Mary. Hey, would the nun care to get the lights, or will her virtue suffer from tampering with such forces?"

Paulina had already snuggled up in the covers and against her pillow that she didn't see the death look Sam was giving her. Sam closed the lights, and crawled into the bed with her, putting her hands into fists so that they wouldn't grab onto Paulina's hair and pull until her head was detached from her body. The only thing holding her back was that it was her own body she would be affecting, not Paulina's, and that would've been a damn shame.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Getting Paulina to be the mean girl is actually so much harder than getting her to be the nice girl.. Cuz with mean girls you just never expect what's gonna come out of their mouths and Paulina Sanchez is no exception.

Anyway, hope you liked this chapter. Review! x

(And thank you again for 100 reviewwwss!)


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:** Hey! I'd wanted to post this last night but something was wrong with FF and apparently the website wasn't available or something like that? I don't know, I'm glad it's up again.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom.

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**Chapter 10**

When Sam woke up the next morning to the blare of her alarm clock, she turned over in bed and realized that Paulina was gone. She slammed her fist over the alarm clock, and rolled over into a sitting position. She yawned, and then started getting ready for school.

When she was done – which was no easy feat, but now that she'd gotten the hang of everything, she did it at a much swifter pace – she headed down to the kitchen to get some breakfast. She was surprised when she found Paulina there, already dressed, making breakfast.

"Good morning," Paulina said cheerfully as she poured the contents of the blender into a cup. "I made you a breakfast smoothie – you'll need to drink this at least twice a week because it's really healthy and full of proteins and such."

Sam eyed the drink warily, the greenish color of it not looking too appealing. She then looked back up suspiciously at Paulina, wondering why she was being nice this morning when just last night she had been acting like a bitch.

Sam pushed away the thought that maybe she'd poisoned the drink because then she'd be poisoning her own body and started drinking. Even though the drink was putrid, it had a familiar tingle in her throat, and she knew Paulina's body was used to taking in things like this all the time, so she drank the whole cup soundlessly.

"Okay, so since yesterday I blew Danny and Tucker off and you blew the cheerleaders off when they asked us to hang out, today we can't do that," Paulina started rambling. She was making herself a grilled cheese sandwich and was simultaneously chopping up cucumbers and carrots for Sam. "When my friends ask you to come to the Nasty Burger with them, don't say you're tired because they won't buy it. You can only fake being tired for so long. So just say yes, and I'll say yes to whatever Danny and Tucker want to do."

Sam, again, didn't reply, instead choosing to munch on her breakfast in silence. Paulina noticed, and stopped cutting the vegetables to look up at her. "What is up with you?" A look of realization dawned on her, and she rolled her eyes. "You're not still pissed about last night, are you?"

As a reply, Sam gave her a glare yet said nothing. "Come on," Paulina said. "It was just a stupid fight. Build a bridge and get over it."

Sam eyed all the efforts Paulina was going to in breakfast and wondered if that was her way of apologizing. But knowing Paulina like she did, Sam realized that Paulina was incapable of feeling remorse, even for the tiniest bit, so she just grabbed the grilled cheese sandwich that wasn't meant for her and started heading out.

"Hey!" Paulina yelled after her. "You're not supposed to eat that."

Sam walked right back to the table and slammed the sandwich back on the plate, and hissed at her, "And you're not supposed to meddle in things you have no business meddling in."

"God, why are you so scared?" Paulina put down the knife and gave Sam a knowing look. "Having sex is not a big deal. In fact, if you're too scared to cross that threshold by yourself, I can do it for you."

Sam felt like Paulina had just slapped her. She slammed her hands on the table, causing Paulina to jump in shock, and leaned closer over the table to make sure Paulina could hear her properly. "Back. Off."

Paulina accepted the challenge and leaned closer herself, sneering. "Make me."

"Fine," Sam shrugged at her. "Then maybe I'll just go quit the cheerleading team. Or start hooking up with nerds. You'd like that, won't you?"

Sam didn't know where that came from, but from the look that flashed across Paulina's face, she was glad she said it. Paulina shut up immediately, pursing her lips, having no retort to say. Sam smirked triumphantly; ignoring the food Paulina had chopped up for her and reached for an apple on the table instead. "Ground rules, Paulina. They're there for a reason."

Like a boss, Sam took a bite out of the apple, gave Paulina one last look, and strode out of the kitchen.

* * *

Sam hadn't spoken to Paulina since that morning.

Even at school, whenever they'd make eye contact, Sam would get a dark look on her expression and look away. They even bumped into each other once in the halls, but while Sam didn't say anything, Star sneered at her and said, "Watch where you're going, _freak_."

Paulina was too taken aback at her best friend's expression to say anything, almost forgetting whose body she was in. Sam didn't say anything as they walked away and didn't say anything as Paulina walked into the Nasty Burger with Danny and Tucker after school that afternoon and Sam had already been there.

Paulina sighed to herself as she and the guys took a seat in one of the stalls by the window. It felt weird to sit somewhere other than the place she and her friends usually sat. She stared at Sam, sitting at the popular table with all the A-listers. Paulina felt weird sitting here and not there; never once in her life had she ever sat at any other table.

Paulina had been spacing out the entire day, torn between trying to act normal as if Sam ignoring her meant nothing to her and locking Sam up in a locker for being such a baby. Paulina didn't even know why Sam was so mad at her. All she did was say the truth. Sam was the one who threatened to ruin her life. Her mood darkened. She wondered how people always saw her as the bad person when it was so obvious it was Sam.

She snapped out of her thoughts when Danny waved a hand in front of her face. "Earth to Sam. What are you staring at?"

Paulina shook her head. "Nothing."

Danny and Tucker trailed after where her gaze had been and found the popular table. Danny snorted when he saw Sam sitting there, but of course, he didn't see Sam; he saw Paulina. "I can't believe I ever had a crush on her."

"I mean, she is hot," Tucker shrugged, which Paulina smiled inwardly at smugly, but that smile was wiped when he added, "hot-headed and hot-tempered, but hot."

"Sorry I didn't listen to you about her sooner," Danny gave her an apologetic look, bumping her slightly on the shoulder with his. "If I'd realized what a shallow, dense witch she was sooner, maybe we would've gotten together sooner than the end of the world."

"I am _not_ shallow and dense," Paulina accidentally said, then she instantly regretted it. Hastily, she added, "I mean, I think that's only the exterior that people see to her."

Tucker actually dropped his burger as his eyes bulged out to stare at her in shock. "What did you just say?"

"What?" Paulina was starting to get uncomfortable under their stares. "Looks can be deceiving, right?"

Tucker burst out laughing. "Sam, you've been calling her that for your entire life. Have you even forgotten the torment she puts you through every day, even until now? The torments she puts _all_ of us through?"

"I hate to remind you, Sammy," Danny gave the A-list table a shake of his head, "but once a shallow witch, always a shallow witch. Isn't that what you always said?"

"I just don't think that's true anymore." Paulina didn't really appreciate all the things she was hearing. Well, okay, so _she_ was guilty of doing the same thing too; she did always call Sam a freak and make fun of her constantly with her friends. And, so, yes, okay, she may have put all three of them through hell at one point of another, but she was not shallow. Not a lot. Just a little.

"Okay, something is very wrong with you recently," Tucker frowned at her.

Paulina laughed nervously, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "What? Nothing is wrong with me; why would you say that?"

"Well, for one thing, you just let Danny call you Sammy without getting injured." Tucker pointed out.

"Yeah," Paulina snorted. "So?"

She thought that Tucker was just messing with her, but when Danny gave her a look too, she inwardly cursed. "I mean," she tried to salvage the situation, "Danny _is_ my boyfriend, so he gets to give me whatever pet name he wants. Right, Dan?"

Instead of lighting up the mood like she'd hoped she'd done, the tension around the trio tightened even more. Danny's expression got darker and he said, "Why would you call me that?"

"I'm giving you a pet name, silly," Sam shoved him playfully with her shoulder, but he avoided looking at her, his expression pained. When she frowned and looked up at Tucker, he shook his head at her, as if he didn't believe what she just did.

She didn't even know what she'd just done!

She cleared her throat, about to change the subject, when suddenly a weird mist escaped Danny's mouth. She didn't know what _that_ was about, but right at that moment, he sighed, and muttered, "Goin' ghost."

He changed into Phantom next to her, and flew through the ceiling. Paulina didn't know why he randomly decided to leave like that, and was about to ask Tucker what that was about, when suddenly Tucker leaned forward and glared at her. "What was that about? Are you trying to start something?"

"What are you talking about?" Paulina was starting to get really pissed off with those two. There was a reason she had the relationships she did. She was the boss and she ran things, but with these boys, she felt like everything was constantly slipping from her control.

"Calling him Dan like that," Tucker looked frustrated, as if she should've already known. "You know he hates it."

"It's just a name," Paulina rolled her eyes. "Freaky, much?"

"What is _up_ with you?" Tucker shook his head in disbelief at her. "Is this like a PMS thing?"

Paulina glared at him. "Shut up, geek."

Tucker looked like he still had a million things to say, when suddenly, a _bang_ emanated throughout the Nasty Burger. Everyone's heads snapped to the commotion, and by the counter, Danny Phantom got up from where he'd been slammed, covered in what looked like ketchup. "You got nice new guns but you need to work on your aim, Skulker."

Paulina's heart almost stopped when the ghost Danny was talking to phased into the Nasty Burger. "My aim is perfect, whelp. The ketchup is a flavoring so that the vultures enjoy eating the rest of your body once I make a pelt out of you."

Paulina swallowed the lump in her throat and stared at Tucker in horror. "Did he just say _pelt_?"

Tucker got out of the booth and said, "Come on."

While everyone in The Nasty Burger had run out screaming, Tucker, instead of following the terrified screams, instead started heading towards where Skulker was floating.

Paulina squeaked silently as Tucker pulled her arm and dragged her along with him. The Nasty Burger had cleared out now, and just as Tucker was about to pull out his PDA and tap some buttons, Danny threw an ectoplasmic ray at Skulker and sent him flying through the same hole Danny had come in.

Tucker was still grabbing onto Paulina as he changed his direction and started heading outside of the Nasty Burger as Paulina had wanted earlier. This time, however, he didn't scurry away far enough with the rest of the bystanders to watch safely; he dove head-on to where the battle was taking place.

"Where are you going?" Paulina couldn't help yelling. "Are you crazy?"

Tucker ignored her as he reached the battle. Skulker and Danny were wrestling in the sky, each shooting rays of ectoplasm repeatedly at each other. Tucker handed Paulina a coffee can, and said, "Wait for the signal."

That was it. That was all he'd told her. Paulina's eyes widened in terror when she realized that Tucker had run off and left her alone with nothing to protect her but a coffee can.

Paulina had never deliberately walked into a ghost fight before, and right now, she was in the middle of it, with no clue as to what she should do but stand there and stare in horror.

"Sam!" Tucker yelled. "Now!"

Tucker had done something on his PDA a few feet away, and Skulker suddenly stopped shooting rays at Danny and groaned in pain. Electric shocks were seeping from his suit all over his body, and the only thing Paulina could think of was how weird it was to see a ghost being electrocuted by his own suit.

Unfortunately, whatever Tucker had insinuated she do didn't happen because Paulina had no idea what she was supposed to do, and so she missed her cue, just standing limply on the sidewalk, staring up in horror.

Skulker was seizing up in the air, his arms flying everywhere. He had no control over any motion he did, and so the guns strapped to his arms went off, shooting rays of ectoplasm randomly and everywhere.

Unfortunately, they weren't random enough, and one of the rays catapulted and headed right towards where Paulina stood.

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**A/N:** Bet you didn't see THAT one coming... Ah, karma truly is a bitch xD.

A lot of the reviews about the last chapter were like, "Sam's revenge should be Dash" "Sam should use Dash" "Dash has to have a relevance at some point during this story" and such. But no. Sam is using a much more suitable form of revenge... The silent treatment *bursts out laughing*

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading this! Revieww x


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: **Danny Phantom doesn't belong to me. (Both the TV show and the actual person, which is why I cry. *sobs*)

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**Chapter 11**

_Oh my God, _Paulina closed her eyes and braced herself. _I'm going to die_.

Paulina could see the green light growing closer behind her closed eyelids, frozen in place, unable to move. She barely heard someone yell out her name – no, Sam's name – and Paulina braced herself for the pain.

It came, but not in the way she expected it.

Instead of a pain coming from her chest, the pain came from pavement scraping her arm as she was knocked off her feet and shoved to the ground. Paulina let out a breath she didn't know she was holding when the ectoplasmic ray collided with the pavement, burning the asphalt into black ashes. Paulina was vaguely aware of when the rays stopped sprouting everywhere and Danny overcame his opponent as she stared up at her savior.

It was the last person on Earth she'd expect to see: Valerie Grey.

She had no time to stutter out a confused thank you when Valerie yanked her off the ground and into a run as another ray made its way towards them.

"Tucker!" She vaguely heard Danny yell in panic, and as Valerie pulled her to where the Techno-Geek stood, typing commands relentlessly on his PDA, Skulker suddenly stopped seizing. He froze in mid-air, steam coming out of his suit.

Before Skulker was able to regain focus and retaliate, Valerie took the coffee can away from Paulina and aimed it at Skulker. The ghost was sucked into the thermos in flashes of blue and objecting screams and just like that, the mass panic in the air was gone.

"_Stupid huntress_," Paulina almost jumped seven feet in the air from shock when the voice came from the coffee can.

Valerie only rolled her eyes as Danny flew back down to the trio and changed back to his human form, ignoring the whoops and claps of all the bystanders. Paulina was still out of breath from all the running and the almost dying, so when Danny pulled her into his embrace all at once, she felt like her heart had stopped.

"Are you okay?" he whispered in her ear, then let go of her to look into her face. "What happened back there?"

Paulina was still too confused about everything – Valerie, the ghost attack, Tucker putting her into the line of a ghost ray, almost getting killed – so the only thing she could do was stare up at him and say nothing.

"Oh God," Danny cupped both of her cheeks in his hands and grimaced. "Do you think she has a concussion?"

"She would have to hit her head to have a concussion," Valerie said somewhere behind her. "And she didn't hit her head when I knocked her over." A pause. "I think."

"Just take her home," she heard Tucker mumble from behind her. "She's been acting all kinds of weird lately, so maybe this is one of the weird phases."

Paulina let out a soft yelp when Danny lifted her up bridal-style and went ghost. "Come on, Sammy," he told her softly. "Let's take you home."

When Danny took off into the air, it was all Paulina could do not to scream in terror. She tensed in his arms and held on to his torso tightly, squeezing her eyes shut and prayed to God that he wouldn't drop her.

Danny noticed her sudden tension, but said nothing. He knew his girlfriend was having a bizarre phase at the moment, but for whatever reason, he didn't know. It was like she had weird mood swings on and off and they hit him when he least expected it. He wondered if it was a female thing that he was better off not knowing…

Paulina's stomach had settled back into place as the rhythm of Danny's flying became consistent. She dared a peak at the ground below them and instantly wished she hadn't. They were flying over two hundred feet in the air, and Amity Park below them consisted of mere dots and haphazard colors arranged in greenery and pavements. She wanted to sarcastically remark that Danny could fly a little closer to the ground, but her throat wouldn't croak out the words.

Instead of looking back down to her possible impending death, she stared up at Danny. Instantly, she was captivated – the high cheekbones, the glow in his green eyes, the determined line his mouth was in but also the worried creases around his eyes; the way his glowing white hair ruffled in the wind. It was only then that Paulina actually realized that her dream of flying off into the sunset in Danny Phantom's arms was becoming a reality.

So, okay, they weren't flying off into the sunset but to Sam's house; and it wasn't actually Paulina who was supposed to be flying off with him.

Too soon, and yet after what seemed like forever, Danny arrived at the Manson mansion, turned intangible and phased them both into Sam's room through her closed window.

Paulina expected him to set her down as soon as they entered, so was a little surprised when he carried her to the bathroom and set her down on the sink. Paulina frowned as he turned back to human and started searching through her cabinets. "Um," she said, "what are you doing?"

"You seriously don't notice the huge scrape on your arm?" Danny asked, his head in one of the cabinets.

Paulina thought he was kidding at first, but now that the adrenaline was out of her system, she could feel the slight pain coming from her left arm. She looked down, and almost threw up in her mouth. Her skin that had been smooth minutes before turned rough and red with blood oozing out. Now that Paulina had realized that she was hurt, it was like the pain suddenly hit her.

She was used to getting injured – being a cheerleader required a few broken wrists and ankles every now and then – but seeing all that redness and all that blood made her feel woozy.

Danny noticed her sudden paling and dropped the First Aid kit he'd gotten out of the cabinet onto the counter and stood in front of her. "Hey," he cupped both her cheeks and forced her to look at him. "It's fine, you're going to be fine."

Paulina had never before felt such comfort as she did then staring into his big blue eyes. Even though she was still panicking over the blood and the pain, she managed a small nod to tell him she was okay.

Danny laid a small kiss on her forehead and headed towards the First Aid kit. He started pulling out medical gauze and bandages and alcohol and started getting ready to fix her up.

When the small towel he was using hit Paulina's skin, she refrained the urge to scream. Why did healing the injury hurt even more than getting it? She thought to herself.

She took a deep breath and started rambling, trying to distract herself from the pain. "I could've died if Valerie hadn't done that. I didn't even know Valerie could do that. She just swooped in like freaking Superman and saved the day. How did she even do that? I didn't know Valerie could do something like that."

She felt the towel on her arm falter, and then the pain came back again as Danny said, "Sam, are you sure you didn't hit your head?"

"Yes," Paulina answered automatically. "Why?"

Danny shook his head, his eyebrows furrowed in both concentration and confusion. "Are you sure, though? Because if you hadn't hit your head and were completely fine, then you'd remember that Valerie had spent our entire freshman year hunting down my ass. And then when she found out about my secret with the rest of the world, she decided she would help me instead." He looked from the gash on her arm to the confused look on her face. "Remember?"

Paulina vaguely saw her reflection in the mirror behind her, and remembered. "Oh! Right, of course!" She laughed nervously. "I totally remember. How could I forget?"

Danny just frowned at her and said nothing more. Even though whenever Paulina had a doctor's appointment, she talked through the entire ordeal to distract herself from the pain. But this time, she refrained from talking, afraid she'd get herself into an even bigger mess and have to answer even more questions.

And then Paulina channeled the pain she was feeling into a feeling other than absolute uselessness: anger. She was pissed. She almost freaking _died_ today, just because she was forced to pretend to be someone she wasn't. She was forced to pretend she was someone who knew all about ghost hunting and put her life in danger every single day. Sure, her boyfriend was a ghost, and it was probably an occupational hazard – but it wasn't _Paulina's_ occupational hazard.

She wondered why she'd stayed silent about telling Danny all this time. He was right in front of her now, his features twisted into one of confusion, and it was because his girlfriend wasn't really his girlfriend, and he couldn't pinpoint exactly what was wrong. And Paulina knew _exactly_ what was wrong.

Sam had been a huge bitch to her that morning, and all Paulina was trying to do was make things between them okay and normal again. Paulina got even angrier when she remembered the way she sneered at her at school. How _dare_ she? Who the hell did she think she was?

Paulina made up her mind, and was about to confess everything to Danny when he snapped her out of her thoughts when he said, "There, all done."

Paulina had been too distracted by her thoughts to notice that Danny had bandaged her arm and was all done. Paulina could vaguely feel the throbbing anymore. She looked up at Danny, said a brief, "Thanks," and was about to launch into an explanation about what had happened when he interrupted her again.

"No need to thank me," he stood directly in front of her so that her breath caught from how close he was. She could feel his breath on her cheek and his heart beating in his chest. "You've patched me up in much worse situations."

Paulina swallowed, all thoughts of telling Danny the truth dimming in her head. "Yeah. Sure."

"Are you _sure _you're okay?" he asked her, and she barely even heard the words he was saying as his hands started snaking their way onto her waist. If Paulina didn't know any better, she'd think he was a tease.

She couldn't stand it anymore. She ignored his question and kissed him, bringing her hands up to his neck and pulling his face closer to hers, spreading her legs wide on the counter so that he was pulled up against her. Danny's hands roamed her back, caressing it, sending shivers down Paulina's spine.

When Paulina started kissing his neck, she heard him mumble, "You're definitely fine now." She laughed and brought his mouth back to hers. Moving at a pace she was all too familiar with, she tugged Danny's shirt off and her hands started exploring every inch of the body she'd been dying to get her hands on since she'd first laid eyes on Danny Phantom.

Paulina saw that Danny was making no further move, and she remembered that the body she was in belonged to a prude, so she refrained the urge to roll her eyes, deciding to take matters into her own hands. She brought Danny's hands away from her waist and further up until they snaked a bit below her t-shirt.

Danny paused and brought his lips away from her. Paulina smirked at his shyness and whispered in his ear, "Take it off."

Danny's eyebrows went way up. "Really?"

Paulina had run out of patience, and took her shirt off herself so that she was only in her black bra. She felt a little self-conscious at how small her chest felt compared to how it would've felt had she been in her own body – and that's kind of where she realized what she was doing, who she was doing it with, and in whose body she was doing it.

Danny had taken the hint about digging deeper and was kissing her neck, but Paulina couldn't focus on the tingling in her body from his lips from the sudden nauseas feeling she was getting. She was supposed to tell Danny about everything and get back into her own body _right now_ – she didn't know whether it was the feeling of Danny's mouth and hands all over her that was stopping her or the sudden feeling of guilt that suddenly overtook her.

Paulina didn't have to make her own decision on the matter, because suddenly the door to the bedroom pounded and an angry voice yelled from the other side, "_Paulina_! We need to talk! _NOW_!"

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**A/N:** Do these cliff-hangers get you excited or pissed off? I'd bet it's 'pissed off' since I go out of my way to squeeze one into every single chapter. Hahahahahaha sorry not sorry about that xD.

Anyway, revieww xx


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

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**Chapter 12**

Paulina instantly shoved Danny away from her and got off the counter. Danny was still frowning in confusion, staying in his place even as Paulina struggled to get her shirt on and shoved his shirt to him. "Who's that?" Danny asked as Paulina frantically tried to fix her hair and her smudged lipstick. "And did that person just say _Paulina_?"

Paulina turned to the confused puppy-dog look in his eyes and realized that it was make it or break it time. She could either tell Danny that he heard wrong and that he should go because it was her mother on the other side of that door. Or she could tell him that, yes, the person had called her Paulina because that was who she was; she would confess everything.

Paulina took a deep breath and stared into the blue eyes that have haunted her forever. But at the end, all she could say was, "I'm pretty sure she said _Sam_. You must've been too, um, _distracted_ to hear right." The sudden pounding at the door woke her back up, and she went back into a frenzy, shoving Danny out of the bathroom, into the bedroom and towards the window. "And you should probably go because I think that's my mom."

"What's going _on_ in there?" Sam yelled, jiggling the door knob to find it stuck. Paulina thanked God for her parent's sucky choice of doors. "Open the door!"

"Wow," Danny cradled his t-shirt in his arms as he raised his eyebrows. "Your mom is really pissed. Did she always have an accent like that?"

"I don't know; you gotta go; _bye!_" She shoved Danny out of the window and closed the blinds just as Sam got the door to open and stormed into the room. Paulina froze in place in front of the window, swallowing nervously.

Sam froze in place too, frowning suspiciously and staring at the room. Once she saw that the room was undisturbed, she cleared her throat and calmly said, "Remember all the ground rules we established? Things we needed to be careful of and avoid?" As an answer, Paulina frowned at her in confusion, not knowing where she was going with this. "There was one thing we forgot."

"What's that?" Paulina asked nervously.

"DEATH!" Sam yelled angrily. "Are. You. _Crazy_? What the _hell_ were you doing in the middle of that fight? You obviously know nothing about ghost fighting and could've gotten yourself killed. Could've gotten _me_ killed!"

"That wasn't my fault," Paulina scoffed. "That stupid techno-geek kept pulling me along with him. I was trying to get away but it was so obvious he wanted to get me killed."

Sam smacked her forehead with her palm. "He wasn't trying to get you killed; you were _supposed_ to pull Skulker into the thermos the minute the electric shocks took hold of him."

"I am aware of that now," Paulina folded her arms across her chest and glared at Sam. "_After_ I almost got sent to my death. Your death. _Whatever_! Besides, none of that would've happened if you'd just told me; but no, you were too busy with your head up your ass this morning to get over what happened and _talk_ to me!"

Even though Sam was very tired of yelling, she wanted to scream. She didn't want to be in this situation; she didn't want to be in Paulina's body and watch as the retched witch ruined her life. She just wanted to curl up with Danny on her bed and listen to The Beatles and forget about life and ghosts and paparazzi and fame and all of that crap. She wanted her body back.

"Do you know how close I was to telling Danny everything today?" now that Paulina'd gotten the ball rolling, she couldn't seem to stop. "Even if I still don't know why you can't just _tell_ him so that we'd get our damn bodies back, I honored your rules and kept my mouth shut. Even if I'd almost died minutes before. Even if you were being a stupid bitch."

Sam narrowed her eyes at Paulina and folded her arms across her chest. "Honoring my rules, huh?"

"_Yes_!" Paulina yelled in exasperation.

"Then why is your t-shirt inside out?"

Paulina blanched as she looked down at herself and saw that her t-shirt was in fact inside out. She looked back up at Sam's angry face and knew she was busted.

Paulina swallowed nervously and knew she fucked up. But this time, she couldn't cry her way out of it. Through the hours she'd spent with Sam and the years she'd known her, she knew that Sam expected her to cry and wouldn't be phased by it.

So she stayed still, not saying anything or pleading her case, waiting for Sam to react. A few moments passed, and all Sam could do was glare at Paulina. And then Sam seemed to come to a decision, shook her head, and said, "That's it. I've had enough."

Without another word, she headed out of the room. Paulina frowned at her retreating back, uttering, "Wait, what?"

Sam was halfway through the doorway as she turned to Paulina with a really tired look in her eyes and said, "I've. Had. Enough. I'm telling Danny so that we could switch bodies back and so I wouldn't have to speak to you again."

Paulina should've been relieved. Ecstatic – she was going to get her body back. She would get her _life_ back. She should've been jumping up and down in joy and racing Sam to Fenton Works at this minute, unable to wait another minute.

But the truth was… She was mortified.

"No, no," Paulina had been spacing out that when she ran out of the room to catch up with Sam, the Goth had already made it downstairs. Sam was headed towards the back door in the kitchen when Paulina caught her arm, causing her to halt.

"Wait, Sam, don't tell Danny," Paulina said. "Please, just wait a minute."

Sam shook off her arm and turned to her with an exasperated look. "Are you serious right now? The only thing you've been pestering me with all week is telling Danny and now that I'm finally going to do just that, you don't want me to? Does nothing ever please you?"

"Sam, you can't tell Danny," Paulina shook her head vigorously at her. "Okay, not after everything I've been through in your body. I'm not ready to go back yet." Paulina took a deep breath and grimaced at how that sounded. "Wait, that's not what I–"

"I know what you meant," Sam gaped at her a little bit. "My life is just perfect and you want to keep it to yourself."

Even though Sam's sentence had been dripping with sarcasm, Paulina finally admitted it and said, "Yes. Yes, okay, that's why. Sam, you actually have a life. Even if the total number of friends you have is only two and one of them is your boyfriend, you have an actual life. They care about you and love you. They don't stumble over their every word, looking for the perfect ones just so that they could please you and stay on good terms with you. But for what? Popularity? The only reason all those people fawn over me is because I'm hot and popular and they're terrified of me. But I don't _want_ that anymore. I'd rather not have anything handed to me on a silver platter and if everything stopped being about plastic and shiny things and it was just _real_." Paulina let out a huge shuddering breath, having said all the speech in one breath. "You know who I saw today? I saw Valerie. And that girl has her shit pulled together so much that you wouldn't even know she'd been through hell. And I know she'd been through hell because I was the one who made sure of that. And even though she's not popular anymore and the majority of people in school address her as a loser, she's got her entire life figured out. I found out about her ghost hunting thing. And seeing her today… She looked _happy_. Genuinely happy, even if her life in high school was a mess. The Techno-Geek is happy. Danny is happy. _You're_ happy. Everyone has nothing and is happy and I have everything and couldn't be more miserable."

She couldn't believe she finally admitted it. The feelings have been brewing inside of Paulina for so long, but she was so mad at herself for hating everything she'd ever wanted, so she's suppressed the feeling, pressing them down, down, until she could ignore them. But after actually living a life like Sam's, she couldn't ignore them anymore. That wish was just a slip into that façade. She couldn't hide it anymore. She didn't want perfection – it no longer satisfied her like it used to. She wanted _real_.

Throughout her entire confession – and she had to admit, she confessed _a lot_ (nothing ever went halfway with Paulina; it was either go hard or go home) – she had been looking anywhere but at Sam, afraid of making eye contact and see her own face staring back at her, appalled. Now that she was done talking, she dared a peak at Sam and waited for her reaction.

It wasn't quite the one she was expecting.

She was expecting Sam to understand everything and to tell her that it would be alright, pat her shoulder awkwardly, whatever; she just expected a _little_ sympathy. However, Sam only snorted, and said, "You sound like such a spoilt brat right now."

Paulina's mouth could've hit the floor, but Sam didn't really care. "Okay, so I get why you kind of hate your life – I mean, I'm sort of living it right now. But you didn't get anything you didn't deserve, Paulina. Your life is the way it is right now because that's what _you_ made it become. You could've had real and happiness if that's what you really want – you could've been genuine. But you decided to be a bitch. It's a cold and cruel truth, but that's ultimately what you are and what you'll always be: a self-centered selfish bitch who only cares about herself."

When Paulina could only gape at her, with nothing else to say, which was kind of a big deal, because Paulina _always_ had something to say, Sam only shrugged. "It is what it is. But you can't have my life, Paulina, because it's not yours. It's mine. I'm telling Danny and there's nothing you can say to me that will change my mind."

And just like that, Sam left Paulina standing there in the kitchen, looking like a puppy someone had just kicked, going out the back door and to the one person she swore would never know about this.

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, so I should've probably mentioned this at the very beginning of the story about the lack of DP episodes I've been watching, so that's why I can't nail the characters perfectly. Sam is basically the one who's reactions I have the hardest anticipating, and Paulina's are the trickiest to create, because on the show you only know her as the shallow witch and girly girl Sam shows her out to be, so I'm trying to dig deeper into her actual character while still maintaining the one we know. So I'm sorry if the characters seem OOC at most times - just thought I should put that out there (:

Anyway, hope you're enjoying reading this! Review x


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: **I'm not not Butch Hartman so therefore I don't own Danny Phantom. But you already knew that :3.

* * *

**Chapter 13**

Okay, so Sam had to admit: she did feel a _little_ bad.

But only a little.

But it's not like there was any other way she could've handled that huge confession. She knew that Paulina thought that Sam would feel bad for her and pat her on the back and hold her as she cried and tell her things were going to be alright. But Sam was a Goth. Even if she wasn't sarcastic or pessimistic all the time, that didn't mean that she was going to be the brightest sunflower in the field. And she knew that if she coddled Paulina like a little baby, then what would be the point? She really was a spoiled brat, and making her feel like one would only make it okay for her to just cry and say things like that when she screws up and expect everyone to forgive her.

Sam knew she was doing the right thing. In fact, it was the thing she should've done the minute she woke up as someone else.

It didn't really matter how bad she felt. What's done is done.

Okay. So maybe she felt _really_ bad.

For Paulina Sanchez to express such emotion and admit such things was a whole new thing that Sam had not been prepared for. She was wrong when she thought she couldn't only handle nice Paulina; nice Paulina was nothing compared to honest Paulina.

Sam inwardly shook her head. There were so many faces to that girl that she lost sight of what was actually her.

But she knew that the girl who'd almost burst into tears in front of her a few minutes ago was real. She knew Paulina was a good actress, but nobody could be _that_ good.

She shook her head for real this time, as if trying to clear all her thoughts away. No. She couldn't feel bad for Paulina right now. The only person she should feel bad for was herself if she was going to go and tell Danny about everything.

She only had a few more blocks until she reached Danny's house, passing through the park. The setting sun made the leaves on the trees turn into oranges and pinks, and parents were leaving with their kids to go home for dinner.

Sam's trip to Danny's place would've been undisturbed and without pause had Dash Baxter not run into her.

"Whoa," she hadn't even noticed him as he came by, so had bumped into his huge muscular shoulder by accident. "Easy there, tiger."

Sam refrained the urge to roll her eyes. "Sorry, Dash. Bye, Dash."

She circled around his huge frame and started walking away, but Dash wasn't going to give up that easily. "What's the rush, babe? Let's hang out for a while."

Dash had rested his arm around her shoulder, and while Sam's instant reaction would've been to throw up, Paulina's body responded differently to his touch. "Um, I actually have some other place I need to be, so we can 'hang out' some other time."

She ducked from under his shoulder and walked a little faster away. She finally thought she'd gotten rid of him when suddenly, hands grabbed her arms, shoved her against a tree, and lips started attacking her mouth.

Again. Gag reflex.

However, Sam hadn't been anticipating it, so hadn't anticipated the way Paulina's body stopped listening to Sam's mind and she started wrapping her arms around his neck and allowed his hands to snake up her waist and pull her closer to him.

And in that moment, Sam couldn't push him away. It wasn't the fact that Paulina's body felt really acquainted in the position they were in – but Sam suddenly had a distinct thought: revenge. She would get her body back _and_ get back at Paulina by making out with her boyfriend like Paulina did hers. She didn't really know what was going on with those two, but she knew enough to know that Paulina would be pissed if she saw her now.

A boyfriend for a boyfriend, a thought flitted in her mind.

But after a few moments of Dash attacking her hungrily with his mouth, she couldn't do it. Not to Paulina – and definitely not to herself.

He tasted too much like failure.

So Sam finally got a grip over her body and used the arms she had around his neck to push him away. "Dash, no, stop."

"Come on, baby," Dash had this gleam in his eyes that told her he wasn't even listening as his lips found their way to her neck.

"Dash, I'm serious," she tried pushing him again, but his grip on her had tightened. So, using all her force, she pushed his entire torso away from her, removing his lips from on her so that he stood more than a few inches away.

"Are you kidding me, Paulina?" Dash looked a little pissed. "What, are you like a tease now?"

Sam's gag reflex was finally winning over. She rolled her eyes and said, "You're a disgusting human being. Bye."

She was about to walk away when Dash yet again grabbed her arm and shoved her up against the tree. "You're not going anywhere."

Had this been any other person and had Sam not been as angry as she was, her first emotion would've been fear. But now all she felt was annoyed at Dash's relentlessness. "Oh, what are you going to do, Dash, rape me right here, right now in the middle of the park? Or, wait, I got a better idea, why don't you throw me over your shoulder, shove me into the trunk of your car, kidnap me and then rape me over and over again tonight at your house? Sounds fun, doesn't it?"

Dash was so surprised at her reaction that his grip loosened on her, so when she shook his arm off, it flew off. "Piss off, Baxter. And don't _ever_ touch me again."

* * *

She didn't go to Danny's.

Instead, she changed the course of her journey so that she was heading towards the Danny Phantom statue. For some weird reason, it proved to be a good place to think, and she really needed to think right now.

Sam liked to consider herself a good person. But was she good enough of a person to be good to someone who didn't deserve it? But the fact was, she didn't know if she could send Paulina back to her life like this, when Paulina was feeling all these things at once. And she knew that had it been Paulina back there with Dash, they would've done it right there in the middle of the park. She didn't blame Paulina anymore for being a skank – well, if you're going to run away from your feelings of being unhappy, what better way to do that than through sex? Especially if your mind operates like Paulina Sanchez.

Sam didn't want to feel like she was making excuses for the girl. But after all she'd seen for herself, she knew Paulina was downright miserable and everything she was doing was just an act. She didn't know whether to make her decision on the act or on the real person behind it.

Sam really did want her life back. And she would get her life back. She just didn't have to get it by hurting everyone at the same time – her, Danny, Paulina…

Once she reached the statue, she saw that her thinking place was already occupied. She smiled slightly to herself and walked over to the statue and sat next to the occupant already there on its base.

They sat there in moments of silence, neither saying a word. Finally, Sam said, "I didn't tell Danny."

Paulina had been trying to stifle her sniffs and to hide her tears, but she looked up at Sam with wide, surprised eyes. "Really?"

Sam could only shrug and give her a small nod. Paulina was kind of rendered speechless, so she didn't say anything, afraid of saying the wrong thing and causing Sam to change her mind.

After a few moments of silence, Sam said, "But this isn't permanent. And this isn't me telling you it's okay to keep my life. Because it's not yours." She paused and continued, thinking. "It's been almost a week, and that's usually how long it takes for a ghost to get out of the Ghost Zone. So until Desiree shows up, I won't tell Danny and we'll carry on with the plan like we'd agreed." Sam paused and then looked at Paulina, raising her voice just a little bit to emphasize the importance of what she was saying. "Look, Paulina, I get it. You're going through a horrible time right now. So I'm going to give you enough time in my life just to get your shit together. And I'm only doing that because I don't think you're such a horrid person. Not really anyway. You're just too spoiled and too mean."

Paulina couldn't help but let out a flabbergasted laugh. "Is that your way of saying that you kind of like me?"

"You're not so bad, I guess," Sam shrugged, unable to look her in the eye. "You know, aside from the attitude. The rudeness. The blondeness. The pink–"

"Alright, I get it," Paulina couldn't help grinning, but she was shaking her head with her eyebrows raised. "And _you_, Sam, need to work on your people skills. When you say you like someone, that is not how you say it."

"And what makes you the expert on people skills?" Sam raised an eyebrow at her sarcastically.

"Um, you don't exactly get the title of queen bee only by having rich parents and a rich face," Paulina spoke with this 'duh' tone, as if it was something Sam should've already known. "You actually have to talk to make people like you."

"So that's why you're a horrible person all the time," Sam shook her head. "That makes a lot more sense."

"You know I'm not really a horrible person," Paulina looked down at her dangling feet, staring at the combat boots that she scarcely ever took off anymore. She was actually starting to like those boots – they were kind of a new fashion statement. She bet that she could pull it off – she was Paulina Sanchez, she could pull _anything_ off. "

"No," Sam said, "you just pretend to be one, for reasons that are unknown to me."

"You know why," Paulina said in a small voice, shrugging.

When Sam looked over at her, she realized that this was a whole new side of Paulina that she'd never seen before. She didn't really know when Paulina stopped being the horrible witch she'd always known her to be and started to unfold into an actual human being in front of her eyes. "Yeah. I do."

Paulina looked back up at her with gratitude in her eyes. "Sam? Thanks. Really."

Sam turned to her and couldn't help smiling. When Paulina said nothing more, Sam grimaced at the expression on her face. "Oh no. This is the part where we're supposed to hug, isn't it?"

Paulina grinned, spread her arms wide, and wrapped them around Sam's torso. Sam wasn't giving in though and tried to peel Paulina's arms off her, moving further away from her on the statue. "No, no, human – contact – crushing Goth indifference!"

Paulina finally got her arms off her, which Sam sighed in relief at, not noticing the look Paulina gave her. "Okay, rule number 1 in people skills lessons: when someone is giving you a hug, you're supposed to hug them back, and _not_ say weird shit like that."

Sam rolled her eyes, and, afraid Paulina was going to try and hug her again, jumped off the base and started walking away. "Whatever."

"Rule number two," Paulina jumped off the base as well and started following her. "Don't walk away when someone is talking to you. Rule number three: being nice to someone who's being nice to you doesn't hurt."

"Says the meanest girl in the entire grade," Sam rolled her eyes again, speeding up her pace, trying to get away from Paulina's chatting nuisance.

Paulina scoffed. "Okay, and rule number four is that brutal honestly is not always necessary. Little white lies are appreciated."

"Paulina, please get away from me," Sam had broken into a flat out run, regretting every single nice thing she said to the girl.

"Rule number five!" Paulina panted behind her as they raced around the block.

Before Paulina could say what the fifth rule was, Sam said, "I'm throwing you in this lake."

"There's not even a lake here!"

"No, look, it's this imaginary lake so that you could talk to the imaginary Sam that actually cares," Sam was still running from her, but couldn't help grinning.

"Always be faster that the people trying to be nice to you if you wanna get away from them," Paulina had somehow caught up with her, and Sam cursed the fact that her body fitness was much more better fit for running as Paulina's was for cheerleading. Paulina wrapped her arms around the Goth girl, holding her in place, grinning. "That was rule number five."

* * *

**A/N:** I'm just so weird. One chapter, I'm telling you to like the girl. The other chapter, I'm telling you to hate her, only to tell you to like her again in the next one. Honestly that's how I see the Paulina Sanchez complex - you can't love her if you don't hate her first. Which is weird. Huh. Weirdness. WEIRD.

Sorry for a weird author's note (I just really wish I could stop saying the word 'weird'. It's actually starting to sound kind of funny. Weirdweirdweird. I DON'T KNOW MAN JUST REVIEW).


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Danny Phantom (Okay, seriously, these disclaimers suck.)

* * *

**Chapter 14**

"Okay, okay, I'm done," Paulina finally said, taking a deep breath to compensate for all the air she'd used up talking.

Sam let out a sigh of relief. "_Thank you_."

It was sometime during the night, and both girls were too high on coffee and ice cream – Sam had finally convinced Paulina that as a thank you present, she would let Sam cheat on the cheerleading diet and have a little ice cream – laying on Paulina's king sized bed in Paulina's house – ever since the Danny thing, they decided that staying at Paulina's would be less risky.

They were both at that state where they were both so tired and were dying to sleep but were too hyper to actually sleep. While Sam took the excitement buzzing in her stomach by saying nothing and just thinking, Paulina took it out by doing the thing she did best: talking. And talking. And talking. _And talking_.

The girls stared up at the ceiling in silence for a while. They were lying opposite to each other, so that Paulina's face was by Sam's feet and vice versa. Even though Sam had slept in this bed before, she'd never really noticed the ceiling. Unlike the rest of the room, it wasn't pink – it was a dark navy color, and star stickers were plastered on the walls. Moons, galaxy shapes in colors of blue and white and pink were arranged haphazardly all over the ceiling, and overall it made Sam feel as if the ceiling was torn out and she was staring at a starry sky.

"Okay," Sam resisted the urge to grunt in frustration when she heard Paulina's voice again. "So, your turn."

Even though Paulina couldn't see her, Sam raised an eyebrow. "My turn to do what?"

Paulina shrugged on the other side of the bed. "I've been babbling all night about myself. Do you know that I've just told you stuff I've never told anyone before? Not even Star?"

Even though it was kind of bad to assume, but Sam kind of thought that Paulina wouldn't allow Star to hear her say that she actually enjoyed shopping more than hanging out with her. "Yeah," she said. "I know."

"So, it's your turn," Paulina continued. "Tell me something you've never told Danny and Tucker."

"What if I don't want to?" Sam was starting to feel sleep creeping up on her, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Paulina made a disapproving sound. "Rule number 56: when someone tells you something really deep about them, it's kind of obligatory that you do the same."

"What if I don't want to?" Sam repeated again.

"Then you would be breaking the code," Paulina said. "It's in the code, Sam. You gotta tell me something."

Sam blew out a gust of air, and without even thinking about something to tell her, she said, "I don't know what I should tell you."

Paulina didn't respond immediately, so after a few moments of silence, she asked, tentatively and in a soft voice, "Why aren't you ready to have sex with Danny?"

Paulina must've sensed the tension in the air the minute she asked the question, so before Sam could say something, Paulina quickly added, "I'm not asking that as mean, bitchy Paulina who called you Virgin Mary. I'm asking you that as your friend, and I can't help but be curious. Why?"

Sam wanted to leave her right then and there. She wanted to crawl out of bed and leave the room and not answer her question. But to tell the truth… it actually was one thing that she hadn't told anyone. The thoughts were so confined into her own head so that she couldn't run away from them, and even though she was dying to lift their weight off her shoulder, she couldn't find someone to dump them onto. Obviously she couldn't tell her mom; telling Tucker was off the table because she was too embarrassed; and Danny was the last person on earth she wanted to have that conversation with.

So not only Paulina was really surprised when Sam blurted, "Because once I cross that threshold, there's no going back. It's not something I can give up, realize I want it back and then actually get it back."

"It's okay to be nervous," Paulina offered when Sam said nothing more.

"I'm not nervous," Sam sighed. "I'm terrified."

Paulina had never had a conversation with anyone like this before. Paulina never actually had a heart-to-heart with anyone before. Well, she did one time, when she was with Dash, and they'd just finished having sex, and Paulina felt like she had to get loads of things off her chest. So she'd blurted them all to Dash, and he'd nodded along, listening tenderly. And then when she was done, he kissed her forehead, told her that everything was going to be alright, and then started having sex with her again, and when she'd asked him not to mention the conversation they'd had the previous night the next day at school, he'd blinked, and said, "What conversation?"

Even though she knew that she was annoying Sam with all her talking, Sam still offered her responses here and there and yelled at her on more than one occasion – but even though Sam was horrible to her at times, telling her that she was dead wrong when Paulina was convinced that she was right, she felt relief and gratitude that someone was actually listening.

So Paulina was new at this being nice thing. Hell, she was new at being this real, honest thing. She didn't know how she should be there for someone when the only person she was ever there for was herself.

She acted on instinct, and crawled over to Sam so that they were lying side to side now. "Okay, so please don't get annoyed or shut me up, but just be prepared because I'm going to start talking again," Paulina couldn't help but laugh at the annoyed grunt that Sam let out and the roll of her eyes.

"If it were up to me… I'd still be a virgin too," Paulina said. And when she noticed the look that Sam was giving her, she rolled her eyes and said, "Okay, fine, maybe not. Not if Dash had anything to do with it. But I learned that you don't have to be in love to have sex, Sam. It's just physical. It's not supposed to be a mental thing."

"So you think that giving up your virginity isn't a big deal, at all?" Sam asked.

"No," Paulina said without hesitation. "Not at all."

"What if you get pregnant?" Sam couldn't help blurt. "What if you regret it later? What if your first time isn't even that good?"

Paulina snorted. "Oh honey. The first time is _never_ good."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Wow, you really motivated me right now," she said sarcastically.

"Actually, you know what you could do though," Paulina got this excited gleam in her eye as she leaned closer to Sam and whispered something in her ear. Sam's eyes widened, and once Paulina was done, scooted further away from her so that she could stare down at her wide eyes. "You slut! You'd do that?"

Paulina leaned back in bed with a smug look on her face. "Yeah. I may not be the bad person you think I am, but I'm still a slut. And I thoroughly enjoy it."

Sam let out a snort in disbelief. "I will never be able to unhear what you just told me."

"You're welcome."

* * *

For the next few days, Sam couldn't believe how well things were turning out. She'd already gotten the hang of being Paulina, what with school, people, cheerleading practice and all, and as she watched her surprisingly new friend as she dealt with her own life, she couldn't help but be a little proud. Throughout their conversations, Sam couldn't help gushing about Danny and Tucker, and so Paulina knew about the things she should and shouldn't do with them, like why she couldn't call Danny 'Dan' ever. And Paulina had given Sam a very thorough and long explanation about how she is with her group and why she's that way with her group so Sam had no more trouble being the scary her and yet be the nice her, if that made any sense.

The thing that Sam loved the most was the fact that Paulina was sticking to the ground rules; meaning, there was no more contact between her and Danny other than a subtle kiss every now and then and holding hands.

Sam couldn't believe it.

At school that day, a ghost attacked, and Sam had looked up expectantly, hoping it would be Desiree, only to slump in disappointment to find that it was only Technus. She made sure that Paulina was out of the way during the fight like she should, and she found her fleeing the courtyard just like the rest of the terrified student s who ran.

Sam, however, lurked behind one of the columns in the hall, watching Danny as he kicked Technus's butt. She couldn't help but miss being there in the fight, helping him and pulling the ghost in the thermos. She couldn't believe that she even missed the stupid ghost fights.

Once Danny sucked Technus into the thermos, he changed back to human and he and Tucker sat back down at the table right in front of her. Some people hadn't run from the courtyard and were still sitting in their seats like nothing had happened, so nobody stared at Sam as she rested her back on the wall and took a deep breath to get through the day.

She was about to walk away and find Paulina when she heard Tucker say, "–do you expect, man? She's Sam."

Sam frowned and was glued in place. She knew she shouldn't eavesdrop on her friends' conversation, especially since they were talking about her, but they didn't know that it wasn't really _her_ they were talking about.

"No, Tuck, you don't get it," Danny said. "This isn't like one of Sam's normal weird moods. This is different. A few days ago, she was ready to do it all on a sink in the bathroom, and now she won't even let me kiss her in school for more than three seconds. Did I do something wrong?"

Sam held her breath and refrained herself from running into her boyfriend's arms and screaming at him, "No, Danny, you're perfect! It's me who's screwing you up so bad!"

But she stayed in place, remembering the promise she made Paulina and the promise Paulina was keeping in return.

"Okay, so forget about her being Sam," Tucker said, "and think about her being a _girl_. Maybe she's going through some weird female shit that we're really better off not knowing about."

"I don't know, it's just that we talk about everything, and it's weird that she's not talking to me about what's going on right now."

"Okay, do you really want to get involved with her about some menstrual thing and feed her chocolate until she throws it up on your and make her a song CD to listen to while she has cramps?"

Danny paused. "Well, yeah."

Tucker snorted. "Then the problem obviously lies with _you_, my friend. Come on, bro, let's go look for your manhood."

"Hey!" Danny yelled indignantly, and she heard them both get up and start walking away. She stayed still as they passed right by her, but both were too distracted to notice her. "Just because I'm an awesome guy to my girl, doesn't mean I'm surrendering my manhood."

"Yeah, sure," Tucker patted him on the back and shook his head. "I still think we should go look for it."

As they disappeared into the school, Sam snorted to herself and tried not to laugh out loud. She really did miss her friends.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Aw. Cute chapter.

But you don't really want a cute chapter, do you? xD. Don't worry. The cuteness won't last... But that's for me to know and for you to read and find out x3.

Revieeww xx


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 15**

Paulina was used to many things. She was used to being used for her popularity and looks; she was used to getting in trouble for a number of different things; she was used to the entire student body cowering under her feet; hell, she'd even gotten used to it when the student body stopped cowering under her feet. But Paulina was definitely _not_ used to having a friend. A real friend.

And damn, it felt good.

She used to hate the Goth girl. She used to make fun of her and make her life so miserable she wished she was dead. She didn't know how she could actually genuinely _like_ her. They had nothing in common – well, maybe aside from their heritage and their rich parents – yet Paulina had never felt so close with anyone before. It was weird, but she liked it.

She'd read somewhere that opposites attract. Maybe that also applied to her and Sam.

She shook the thoughts out of her head and tried focusing on her homework. She was at home – well, Sam's home – and couldn't help but be in envy because Sam was going out with the cheerleaders. Even though Paulina said that she didn't want her life back just yet, she didn't mean she'd want to spend this one holed up at home and doing homework.

She zoned out in front of her computer screen, and a thought popped into her head. Since Sam Manson was Danny Phantom's girlfriend, and since Danny Phantom was a world hero, then shouldn't people be talking about Sam on the news as well as the Ghost Boy? This was a press, after all; any story they got their hands on, they used.

So Paulina shamelessly started typing in 'Sam Manson' in the search engine. Thousands of results popped up, so many, in fact, that Paulina's eyebrows rose way up. News articles, magazine articles, website articles, news shows like The Insider and ET; all of those were talking about Sam.

Paulina had just wanted to see whether Sam was actually famous, but all of the articles caught her eye, so she got curious and started opening them.

A few articles turned into many, and the surprised grin on Paulina's face had gradually started to change into shocked frowns and gapes. All of the articles, even though some of them were unbiased… All of the comments written on it were negative. _All _of them. It was very scarce that Paulina found someone commenting something nice about Sam. Everyone, probably most of them jealous girls, kept saying that Sam didn't deserve Danny; that she was just a stupid Goth girl; she wasn't even pretty; freak; and a lot more horrible things about the Goth.

See, here's the thing: Paulina wasn't new to this whole thing. Had she been still in her body and had found out about these articles, she would've left the exact same comments in more and more numbers. But now that she knew better – not only knew Sam and Danny's relationship better, and not only knew Sam herself better, but knew the attitude she used to have pre-switch better – she was pissed. She was pissed at these people.

That was like a huge slap in the face, a slap that reminded her of exactly who she was before any of this happened. And she hated it. She thought maybe just because it wasn't her body she was in and so the thoughts swimming in her head were not all her own, but she knew that wasn't the case. In the time of less than two weeks, Paulina's way of thinking had drastically changed just because she was on the other end of those comments.

Paulina was Sam's friend. And as her friend, she would do something about this.

* * *

Once Sam saw her, her eyes widened and her mouth opened wide in shock. "_Paulina. What. Did. You. Do?_"

Paulina grinned, and fluttered her fingers in her hair, spinning in place. "You like?"

Sam was too speechless to say anything. She was looking at herself… but it wasn't herself. Paulina had apparently used the money that Sam preferred not to, and was holding shopping bags. She had bought brand new combat boots, these reaching all the way to a little above her knees. She was wearing a leather skirt so short that Sam felt like her entire legs were bare, disregarding the boots. Her trademark black t-shirt was replaced by a black halter top that ended just by her belly button, and while Paulina had twirled for her, she discovered that her entire back was bare.

That wasn't even the worst part.

Sam's shoulder-length hair pitch-black, glow-blue-in-the-light hair was cut all the way to her chin, and while all her hair had been the same length, Paulina had cut some bangs and brushed them to the side. Sam always wore her hair straight, but Paulina had gotten it curled. Oh, and her hair was red.

Like, not ketchup red, not orange red, but like a really dark auburn color that glowed red in the sun, and since they were in the middle of the street, the dark red on her hair glowed like the color of blood.

"_What did you do to my hair_?" Sam gasped, covering her mouth with her hands at the total shock she was in.

Paulina didn't understand the shock thing, since she grinned again and repeated, "You like?"

"No, I do not!" Sam yelled, attracting the attention of a few people on the street. "I look like a freaking bimbo whose job is to walk down a runway wearing nothing but skimpy bikinis and underwear!"

Paulina rolled her eyes at how overdramatic her friend was being. "Don't be such a drama queen; it looks sexy!"

Sam felt like she was going to scream, so she rolled her hands into fists and put said fists in her mouth to prevent said scream from coming out in the middle of the street. Keeping in the mortified and furious screams in her body caused Sam to start panting. Her entire chest was on fire from all the anger and her breathing came out in ragged gasps, and the entire time she was glaring at Paulina and tried to catch her breath.

"Um, Sam…" Paulina had a freaked-out look on her face because of Sam's reaction. "Are you okay?"

Sam was definitely _not_ okay. She thought that she was having a panic attack. She probably _was_ having a panic attack. But she was angrier than she was in panic.

"How – why would you – _what_ – WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?" Sam finally exploded, not caring about all the weird looks she was receiving. "In case you haven't noticed, I am a _Goth_, and Goths are not supposed to look like you right now!"

Paulina was getting uncomfortable with all the eyes they were drawing to themselves, and quickly took hold of Sam's arm and led her to an alley between two buildings where no one could see them. "Jesus, keep your panties in your pants," Paulina hissed. "I didn't just do this on a whim. I actually googled Goth looks online and tried to incorporate that here."

"Why would you make me an entire new Goth when I already was one?" Sam couldn't believe they were having this conversation. Paulina was crazy, she was _crazy_.

"Because of all those articles and comments, Sam," Paulina said, and that halted Sam a bit in the tantrum she was about to have.

"Wait, what? What articles?" Sam asked in confusion.

"You know," Paulina shrugged. "The ones calling you an irrelevant Goth who doesn't deserve the heart of the world hero, Danny Phantom."

Sam still thought Paulina was crazy – but after what she said, she took a step back. "Wait… Why would you read those?"

"Okay, whatever, so I googled you and found the articles," Paulina said, waving her hand dismissively. "That's not the point. The point is that those people were wrong about you. I… I was wrong about you. So, as your friend, I wanted to help you."

"By turning me _into a bimbo_?" Sam yelled. She really couldn't believe that Paulina thought that anything she was saying was logical.

"_No_," Paulina thought Sam was smart. She didn't know how she was missing the point this entire time. "You're still you, you're still Goth Sam Manson. You're just a sexier, cooler Goth Sam Manson."

Sam actually laughed at that. She knew she probably sounded like a maniac, but she didn't know what else to do. If she hadn't laughed, she would've cried.

She shook her head at Paulina. "You… you're crazy, okay. You're fucking crazy."

"Wait," Paulina furrowed her eyebrows when Sam started walking away from her. "Where are you going?"

She didn't answer, and she wouldn't tell Paulina where she was going like Paulina hadn't told her what she was doing.

Paulina claimed to do this to be a good friend. Now it was Sam's turn to be a good friend.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

Sam had been sitting on a bench, waiting for ten minutes for him to show up. She'd texted him and he'd replied almost immediately, and she told him to meet her in the park. Even though it was nighttime, the park was bustling with people, and that was most convenient for Sam, because she wanted this to go down in a public place lest something happen.

She almost thought he wasn't going to show up, but she saw him heading over to her and sitting next to her on the bench.

She got tongue-tied for the first few seconds, not knowing exactly what to say or how to say it. He broke the silence first when he said, "I'm surprised you wanted to see me after what'd happened."

Sam looked up and met Dash's eyes. "There's something I need to tell you."

"If it's about you reconsidering our position…" Dash scooted closer to her on the bench so that his thigh was touching hers and had a smirk on his face.

"Um," Sam moved away from him. "No. Listen, Dash. Whatever we had… It's over."

The quarterback frowned down at her. "What do you mean it's over?"

"I mean, it's over," Sam shrugged. "Whether I was your girlfriend or your booty call or just some form entertainment, it's done. I don't want you talking to me again in a way that means that we're more than friends. Or friends with benefits. Whatever the hell we are."

"You're kidding, right, Paulina?" Even though Dash hadn't moved, Sam saw the anger in his eyes.

"No," Sam said, "I'm not."

Dash suddenly tore up from his seat and took a few paces in front of her. He looked back at her with a furious look. "You told me that you didn't want to break up with me. That even if we weren't seeing each other in public, you'd still see me. What the hell is going on with you?"

Sam felt too small sitting down, having him tower over her, so she stood up. "I came to my senses. You are toxic to me, Dash. We can't see each other anymore. In bed and out of bed."

Sam couldn't believe that she'd just said that last part, but it seemed to have worked, because Dash said, "If you think that for one second the sex was my idea, then you're crazy."

Sam wasn't really surprised when he said that. She probably figured that it was Paulina who kept stringing him along as her little sex toy. She almost felt bad for him at the moment, but remembering the bully he'd been all his life and how Paulina talked about him, she was able to suppress it. "Sorry, Dash. It is what it is."

Dash just stared blankly at her. Sam tried to maintain eye contact with him without faltering, but she almost looked away when he sneered at her. "I'd say fuck you, Paulina, but I already have."

And with that sneer, he turned and walked away from her, his strides long and angry. Sam let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, staring at his retreating figure.

She was too distracted thinking about what had just happened that she almost jumped ten feet in the air in surprise when she heard Paulina say from behind her, "Were you just talking to Dash?"

Sam turned to her with a surprised gasp. "Jesus, Paulina! You almost gave me a heart attack."

Paulina was staring at Dash as he disappeared around a corner and into the night to focus on her. "What did you say to him?"

Sam had finally calmed down after that shock, and so shrugged. "Nothing. Just that whatever was between you two was over and that he shouldn't try to talk to you again unless if it was just as your friend."

"You did _what_?" Paulina burst. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I knew _you_ wouldn't do it," Sam folded her arms across her chest. "That guy has some weird thing on you, whether its physically or emotionally, and because I know you want to change your life, I did the first step for you and broke it off with Dash completely."

"You broke me up with my boyfriend?!" Paulina screeched.

"You were already broken up! And he's not your boyfriend, Paulina; he's your sex toy. And real people in the real world don't have guys they're stringing under their fingertips to use them for sex."

"Oh my God," Paulina wasn't even listening to her. "_Oh my God_."

Sam knew she shouldn't feel smug. But she did. "I was just trying to be a good friend."

Paulina looked up at her when she said that with the largest gape. "You… You–"

"I'm just trying to teach you a lesson," Sam told her. "You may think I need people skills, but you need life skills. You can't just do things and expect there to be no consequences. Well, here are the consequences coming back to bite you in the ass."

Paulina shook her head at Sam and started backing up. "How dare you."

"How dare I?" Sam couldn't take it anymore. The only thing she'd been with this girl was nice and understanding and yet Paulina kept doing things to her that she thought were okay but were not. "How dare you? How many times do I have to remind you that it's _my_ life you're tampering with? In the span of the time where we'd switched bodies, I've changed _nothing_ in your life, _nothing_, even though there's not one thing in your life that I like or approve of. But no, you can do whatever you want with _my_ life because you think you're helping. You want to know how that feels like, Paulina? It feels like shit."

"Shut up!" Paulina yelled back. "I hate you! _I hate you! You ruined my life_!"

"And you're ruining mine!" Sam yelled back. Sam couldn't stand staring at her anymore and turned and started stalking away. It was like no matter what she did with that girl, _nothing_ worked. She tried being nice, she tried being indifferent, she tried being mean, she tried being understanding, she tried being _everything_ and the girl still meddled with her life, no matter how many times Sam asked her not to. The girl went as far as tampering with Sam's looks, without even asking her.

Sam was sick of it.

* * *

Paulina was sick of Sam.

She'd stormed back home – Sam's home – and slammed the door to her room. She was still seething with anger. She'd hoped the walk home would calm her down and give her time to think, but there was no thinking about it. Sam, her so called friend, had stabbed her in the back.

Paulina actually opened up to this girl. She considered her a friend, and Paulina had never considered anyone an actual friend before. And this was how that stupid bitch thanked her?

Paulina was pacing around the room, but she felt like she was sitting still. She wanted to do something. She wanted to hurt Sam as much as Sam had hurt her.

She'd only dyed her freaking hair, for Christ's sake! It's not like it was a huge deal. It was only _hair_, and Paulina had made it _better_. Sam hadn't messed with something as stupid as her hair – okay, even though she would've been pissed if she had – but she messed with the most significant thing in her life, besides cheerleading.

Paulina halted in place as an idea formed in her head. She eyed Sam's phone, lying limply on the bedside table, and smirked. She wanted to hurt Sam. And she knew just how to do it.

She went over to her phone and called him. Even though it was late, he picked up immediately. "Sam," Danny answered, with a tone of surprise. "Hey. What's up?"

"I need you to come over right now," Paulina went right to the point.

"Why? What's wrong?" Danny asked, concern evident in his voice.

"Nothing's wrong," Paulina lied. "I just… I need you right now."

He told her he would be right there and hung up immediately. She hung up, and put her phone down. She didn't really know what she wanted to do – all she knew was that it had to include Danny. She realized that the only person who meant everything to Sam, who she cared about more than herself, was Danny.

She realized it. She hurt Danny, she hurt Sam.

As promised, Danny showed up roughly five minutes later, phasing through her window with a worried crease in his brow. She was sitting on her bed waiting for him, so stood up as he landed on her carpet and changed back to human.

"Hey," he smiled lazily at her. "Everything okay?"

"Yes," she told him, "Everything's fine."

"Then what–" He cut himself off and frowned. His eyes narrowed as he took a closer look at her, the moon illuminating her features. "Wait, did you do something to your hair?"

Paulina couldn't believe he noticed. Well, yes, the change she'd made was drastic on someone like Sam, but guys usually never really noticed anything until it slaps them in the face. So she couldn't help grinning happily and fluttering her hair with her hands and say, "I thought it was time for a change. What do you think?"

Danny was shaking his head in wonder. "What do I think?" He took a step closer so that there were only a few inches between them. "I think you look beautiful. Like always."

Paulina smiled up at him gratefully, speechless. Danny was smiling back at her, and his head bowed down so that their foreheads touched. He brought his hands up to feel her new hair and then held her face and drew her lips to his.

After a few seconds of kissing, Paulina remembered why she'd called him here in the first place. Even though it pained her, she brought her head away from his and said, "Wait, wait," her voice was husky from making out with him, and her breaths were started to get ragged. "I just have something I need to tell you first."

"Shoot," Danny was staring at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something.

Paulina opened her mouth, but then closed it. She had been planning on telling Danny everything, making sure to throw it in his face that Sam didn't want to tell him and allowed Paulina to fool him for all this time, hurting him and therefore hurting Sam as well. But staring at him, standing there in the darkness, the moon from the window casting a glow on his face, illuminating his cheekbones and the sparkle in his blue eyes, she got a better idea.

She changed her tactics and wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body even closer to his. "I just wanted to say that I missed you."

She pretended not to notice the look of surprise on Danny's face as she brought his lips down to hers. She didn't even take her time; she started attacking his mouth, and grabbed at the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it up over his head. This time, she anticipated Danny's intentions and knew that he wasn't going to move further without her help, so she kissed him some more, and then leaned back to take her own t-shirt off.

Even though she wasn't in the body she usually flaunted, she still admired Sam's abs and waist, and so tried not to smirk uncharacteristically as Danny's eyes roamed her torso as she backed away from him and onto the bed. He followed her and she crawled backwards on the bed until she was lying on the pillow, pulling Danny down with her.

Sam's body was having such a wild reaction to Danny's kisses and touches, like fire spread on her skin whenever flesh touches flesh. Paulina had never felt this way before, not even with Dash, so that was an even more reason for her not to stop.

Danny's hands were hovering above the strap of her bra, and even though Paulina was too distracted by kissing him, she felt his hesitation. She brought her lips away from him to look in his eyes, which were glazed-over and overshadowed by the dark.

"Danny," she said, panting slightly, "don't stop."

"Sam," he took her cheek in his hand and searched her eyes. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

"No," Paulina shook her head slightly. "No, I want to."

Even though Danny had bent his head and his lips were a few inches away from hers, he whispered a small, "Are you sure?"

Paulina didn't answer him this time and closed the space between them. She grabbed onto every area of skin in him, pulled onto his hair as his hands started roaming as well, gasping when his lips left hers and went to her neck and down her shoulder blades.

There was no Sam under the bed shoving nails at her, or banging at the door. It was just her and Danny and the entire night.

* * *

**A/N:** You: Oh no, she did NOT.

Me: Oh yes. She did.

Review x


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's Note:** I realllyyy shouldn't have felt as happy as I did when I got all of your reviews xD. Your reactions were absolutely priceless! I'm gonna be honest and say that I laughed the entire time. I know, I'm a horrible person x3.

Do you remember when I said that this entire story was based on a scene in my head that I basically based the entire story around? That was the scene. I have a pretty morbid imagination I guess xD.

OH! I almost forgot! IT'S A PARTY! Why, you ask? BECAUSE 200+ REVIEWS!

*Crickets* ... Still mad? Jeez, okay, party for one then :3.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 17**

When Sam woke up the next morning, the first thing she felt was immense guilt.

Well, that was slightly debatable. She felt guilty but she didn't really regret it either. Paulina may have had good intentions about what she did to Sam's hair, but the only intentions Sam had had for what she'd done was revenge. Well, it was doing Paulina a favor, but that wasn't how the Latina saw it at all.

Sam decided that crossing Paulina wasn't the smartest move right now, especially after they'd made a temporary truce, so decided that Saturday morning after breakfast that she'd go to the Manson mansion and talk to her about why she'd done what she'd done.

Once she arrived there, she went against calling Paulina to tell her she's downstairs lest the girl hang up in her face and not open the door for her. So she decided to go the back way and enter through the back door in the kitchen.

In the backyard, she saw movement through the glass kitchen door, and, knowing her parents were on a business trip and no maids were using the kitchen this late, she started pushing the unlocked door open and said, "Hey, we need to talk."

She was right when she thought it was Paulina in the kitchen, because as she pushed the door open and entered, she saw Paulina sitting on one of the chairs on the kitchen table.

She froze in place when she also saw Danny turn away from the breakfast he was making to stare at her in confusion.

"Paulina?" Danny frowned. "What are you doing here?"

Sam couldn't find her voice. She looked from Danny, who was only wearing jeans and had bed hair, to Paulina, who was staring back at her with a look of smugness and innocence. Paulina was also wearing Danny's trademark white t-shirt with the oval in the middle. That was all she was wearing.

Sam's voice caught in her throat, but she forced herself to speak clearly at Paulina and say, "What's going on?"

"Nothing that's any of your business," Paulina snapped at her, but behind the anger and offense she was showing off for Danny, Sam noticed the slight tug of a smug smirk at the corners of her lips.

Sam looked from Paulina to Danny to their tangled hair and their lack of clothing and realization dawned on her. "You… You slept together."

It only took the huge blush that crept up involuntarily on Danny's face to confirm her doubts. When she turned back to Paulina, nausea clouded her stomach and her mind. "You… You…"

Paulina felt nothing at the look on Sam's face. She got up from her chair, sauntered over to Sam, showing off her bare legs in the t-shirt that ended just below her butt, and said, "Do you have something to say?"

Sam didn't look back at Danny to know he was staring at them. She only looked at Paulina, at her own face, looking at her with smugness and satisfaction. Sam didn't stare back in horror anymore. She stared back in rage.

Her throat wasn't constricted anymore. "You backstabbing, vindictive little _bitch_!"

Paulina's eyes widened when Sam shoved her so forcefully the Latina stumbled on her feet, hitting the door behind her. The door opened and she almost fell onto the floor in the living room had Sam not grabbed her shoulder and her hair. Paulina screamed, trying to kick the Goth off her, and in the process tripping on her own feet again, but this time, Sam pushed her own body on her as they both fell.

The girls fell right onto the coffee table in the living room. Sam didn't even feel the few shards of glass that pierced her skin as she yelled, "You slept with _my_ boyfriend, you–"

Sam would've called Paulina every single name in the dictionary, but Paulina cut her off with a smirk and said, "Technically, youmean _my_ boyfriend."

"Shut _up_!" Sam yelled at her. "I'm a virgin!"

"Well," even though Paulina was lying beneath her, on broken glass, and some shards had scraped her otherwise flawless skin, the Latina shrugged with a nonchalant smirk. "Not anymore."

Sam screamed. She actually screamed, the hand she had in Paulina's hair pulling harder and the other throwing punches at her face. "_I HATE YOU_!" Sam screamed loudly, using her knees to make sure she was hitting Paulina where it hurt. "You _bitch_, you _fucking whore, I hate–"_

She could've continued all night. She could've kept throwing punches and kicks and pulled at her hair and caused all the damage she could, regardless of the fact that it was her own body she'd be causing damage to, but she didn't care. She wanted to hurt her so bad Paulina wouldn't be able to get up.

But she didn't get the chance, because whatever was taking Danny so long to react was finished, and he tore Sam off of Paulina, who coughed and wheezed at the weight torn off her.

"Paulina, cut it out!" Sam was still flinging punches and kicks in his arms, trying to get him to let go of her to resume killing the Latina. "STOP!"

"Let me go!" she told him. She didn't know why he was being like this, he was _her_ boyfriend. "I'm going to _kill her_!"

Even though Paulina was bloodied, mishaven, and in pain, she managed to get up, stumbling. "Look," she coughed, but then her tone got even as she continued and said, "it's not my fault you have some weird, obsessive crush on my boyfriend."

"YOUR boyfriend?" Sam thrashed even harder, trying to get to that stupid smirk on her face and wipe it off with her nails.

"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Danny yelled, using all the force in his body to stop all of Sam's thrashing.

"Let me go!" Sam elbowed Danny so hard in the ribs he gasped, and his grasp loosened on her enough that she managed to make her way out of his arms and onto the ground.

Paulina braced herself for another brawl, but it never came. All three stood gasping, Danny rubbing at his ribs and waiting for Sam to make another move to grab at her.

Sam stared at Paulina's – her – bloodied face. She stared at the runny nose, the cut on her lips, the disheveled hair that had bits and pieces of glass in them; she stared at the few scrapes along her arms and legs from the glass, and the bruises she knew would appear on her skin later in the day.

She didn't want to beat the crap out of Paulina anymore.

She looked away from her own body to Danny. He was staring at her with such confusion and anger. She realized all at once again that he only saw Paulina Sanchez, the girl who he'd crushed on for most of his freshman year, the girl he realized was actually a retched witch after he got together with Sam, and the girl he'd slept with without knowing he was.

She couldn't bring herself to tell him the truth either at the moment.

And then something inside of Sam broke. She couldn't look at her own face anymore or her boyfriend's face and feel total betrayal. She shook her head at who she thought was her friend, but before she could turn and run, Paulina and Danny heard the heart-wrenching sob she let out as she ran from the living room, stepping over the broken glass and the chair they'd knocked down and out the door.

"What the hell was _that_ about?" Danny exclaimed. "What is _wrong_ with her?"

He turned away from where Sam had stood and made his way over to Paulina quickly. He was saying a lot of things to her, shaking the glass out of her hair and rubbing the blood away from her face, saying soothing and comforting words. But Paulina didn't hear him or see the concerned, even if confused, expression on his face.

She only heard Sam's bone-crushing sob and saw the tears in her eyes and the way her face had contorted into one of absolute sorrow before she'd turned away.

* * *

All Sam could do was run. She just ran and ran and tried to forget. She tried to forget the blush on Danny's face and how he looked like he was glowing, standing there in her own kitchen, making breakfast on the stove for the imposter sitting by the table. She tried to forget the smirk on her own face, the smugness in the knowledge that something dear and irreplaceable had been taken away from her.

But she could not forget. The image of Paulina and Danny getting busy in her own bedroom was glued forever in her skull. But while Danny saw it as him making love to his girlfriend, Sam only saw him fucking the only person she'd ever hated in her entire life with such a passion it burned her heart.

No, she realized. The burn in her heart wasn't just the hatred she felt towards Paulina at his moment; it was because she couldn't catch her breath. So even though all she wanted to do was run for the rest of her life until she forgot, she forced herself to stop by grabbing at a tree branch. She didn't even know how she'd gotten to the park.

She put a hand over her mouth to try and drown out her cries as she sank down to the base of the tree, grasping at the bark in its trunk, trying to find something that will anchor her to this world. But she felt detached and felt only the pain.

She didn't know how much time had passed. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? The sun was still standing high in the sky, but she felt like an eternity had passed.

There were so many tears she felt inside of her that were yet to be let out, but they halted when a presence was suddenly beside her. "Paulina?"

Even though it wasn't her own name, she looked up, because the name sent knives into her stomach and into her heart.

She was surprised to find Kwan leaning over her, a confused and concerned expression on his face. "Um… hey. Um…" he rubbed the back of his neck nervously, not knowing what to say. "Are you okay?"

Sam couldn't find the words to describe how she was feeling, so all she could do was shake her head and let out a little sniff.

"Oh," Kwan started looking around him, wondering why he'd put himself in this situation in the first place. He cleared his throat awkwardly and asked, "What happened?"

Sam didn't know how to tell him that a lot of things had happened at once. She didn't know where to start: the betrayal by both her boyfriend and her friend, the switch, the sex, the bitching, the pain, the fights – she didn't know. After a few moments, she finally said, "I lost my virginity." Her voice broke at the end of the sentence, and she felt a fresh new wave of tears as she continued in a hoarse, squeaky voice, "And I wasn't even there when it happened."

She looked back down and started sobbing again, completely oblivious to Kwan blinking at her in confusion. He stuttered, not knowing what to do or say, but after he noticed that Sam wasn't even paying attention to him anymore, he sneakily yet guiltily walked away, not knowing what else to do.

Sam ignored Kwan as he walked away. She figured he would do as such – after all, he didn't see Sam and her problems; all he saw was Paulina and her petty issues and her selfishness and her horribleness. She hated herself for ever thinking that the Latina could mean anything more to her than just a girl in her grade that she hated. She wanted to kick herself for every smile she gave her; every humane conversation they had together; every joke they shared. She couldn't believe she ever thought that Paulina could feel any human emotion and express real feelings. She was a psychopath. She wouldn't be surprised if Paulina was diagnosed to be one.

And then she didn't hate just that. She hated herself most of all. For not telling Danny. For making this deal with Paulina. For making this deal with the devil. For listening to Paulina and not going after Desiree herself. None of this would've happened.

Sam looked up from where her head was resting against her knees and stared ahead. Why _didn't_ she do any of those things? Why didn't she tell Danny? She could tell him right now. He'd know she was right. He'd been trying to figure out what was wrong all this time but could never actually figure it out. She had the answer and she could tell him right now.

She shook her head at herself. She couldn't tell Danny. Not right now. The only reason she'd never told him in the first place was because she didn't want to hurt him. But telling him now? That would hurt him even more. She couldn't do that to him.

And then a thought crossed her mind. She couldn't wait for Desiree to get out of the Ghost Zone anymore. She had to go in there and get the genie bitch herself. And she didn't have to ask for Paulina's permission either.

It's not like Paulina had.


	18. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 18**

Sam wiped away the tears, the blood, the shards of glass that were still glued to her skin, and made her way over to Fenton Works.

There was a determined march to her walk, and she stared directly in front of her, avoiding eye contact with anyone she passed on the street. She tried to turn off her emotions as she walked, breathing in and out, feeling nothing but the pavement beneath her feet and the slight breeze in her hair.

She tried not to think of what she was about to do as she reached Danny's house. She knew that Danny himself wasn't going to be there, but she didn't know about his parents or Jazz. So she slowly turned the key in the door after retrieving it from underneath their _Welcome_ rug, and opened the door as softly as she could. She winced at the creaks it kept making, but forced it to open halfway as she squeezed herself in.

She closed the door silently behind her and listened. Sure enough, there were voices in the kitchen, and she heard Jack yell something at the TV. She rushed to the basement, relieved that Danny's parents were occupied elsewhere.

She tiptoed into the basement, hoping that Jazz wasn't here, proved right when the basement was totally empty. She took in the workbenches, the tools, and then turned to the Ghost Portal. Despite Danny's requests, his parents still opened it, wanting to make repairs and now, study it even more after they saw what it had done to their son. But when they weren't using it, they closed it, like it was closed now.

Sam walked over to its control panel and hit the _open_ button. The metal around the portal retracted and opened to reveal the swirling green vortex as it cast shadows all over the basement floor.

Sam didn't even think as she headed directly towards the Specter Speeder and got in. She felt familiar inside the machine, moving her arms across the dashboard, the steering wheel and all the controls in front of her.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. She'd never been into the Ghost Portal alone before. She always had either Danny or Tucker with her, so at this point, the nerves were catching up to her, creating a lump in her throat and causing her heart to beat a bit faster.

Sam shook her head, chastising herself. If she couldn't take a little trip into the Ghost Zone and out, then how could she call herself Danny Phantom's girlfriend, for Christ's sake? She was not a pussy – and she refused to let something she did all the time make her one.

So she switched on the controls of the Specter Speeder, and the control board activated to life. The Specter Speeder floated above the ground, directly in front of the Portal. Sam narrowed her eyes defiantly at the green vortex in front of her, took hold of the steering wheel, and took off into the Ghost Zone.

She was swallowed by the green, and immediately, she found herself floating in it. The ectoplasm of the Ghost Portal surrounded the Specter Speeder as she flew through the Ghost Zone, passing many doors and terrains along the way.

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. _Aright_,she thought to herself. _The hard part's done. Now to find Desiree_.

Each one of the trio had always kept a copy of the map of the Ghost Zone, and they'd made one and put it in a little compartment inside the Specter Speeder. Now, Sam opened the compartment and pulled the map out.

She held the steering wheel with one hand as she unfolded the map with the other. Once it was open and in front of her, she tried to re-acquaint herself with it, and remembered the jagged lines that she and Danny and Tucker had drawn together, her eyes trailing from one place to another. And then she finally found that little place, marked with _Desiree_ on it, and she smirked despite herself.

"Gotcha," she said to herself out loud. She balanced the map in one hand and started driving the Speeder towards her destination.

A few seconds hadn't passed and she heard weird shuffling and moving from behind her. She thought it was just some engine problems… and then she started hearing voices.

She rolled her eyes at herself and knew her imagination was only playing tricks on her. After all, she was a little spooked, and she _was_ in the Ghost Zone, which was crawling with ghosts, so she was bound to get jitters.

What she thought was a hallucination was not actually a hallucination.

Seconds after that, she heard a voice yell in surprise, "_Paulina_? What the hell are you doing?"

Sam had been so shocked at the voice; she jumped in shock in her seat with a gasp. The hand that had been steering the wheel jerked with her, and the Specter Speeder went catapulting wildly in the air. Sam fumbled with the map and tried to control the wheel, but by then it was too late.

The Specter Speeder crashed on one of the terrains in a heap of smoke and debris, and Sam's heart dropped as she heard the dying of the engine.

* * *

"_What_?" Danny yelled into his phone. "Tuck, I swear, if this is a joke–"

"How would someone make a joke out of this?" Tucker told him in exasperation on the other end. "Just get here, _fast_."

Danny brushed away and few strands of hair that had fallen onto his eyes and sighed in frustration. "Alright, alright, I'm coming."

He hung up, a confused expression on his face. He spaced off for a few moments at nothing in particular, and then he turned to his girlfriend. Paulina was sitting on the bathroom counter, a sight that wasn't unfamiliar, and she had several Band-Aids across her arms. Danny had dabbed at the cuts she had obtained from the glass, and covered those that looked too intense to leave bare. He rubbed creams on her bruises, helped her get the glass out of her hair, and they had just finished patching her up in silence.

"Is everything okay?" Paulina swallowed nervously. Danny had been asking a million questions as he fixed her up, a million questions that she couldn't bring herself to answer. He took her reluctancy to talk as a sign that she was still shaken up about the encounter, so stopped pressing her for an explanation halfway through the entire process.

Danny shook his head and realization dawned upon him. "I just got the weirdest phone call from Tucker. He said he and Jazz were in the Specter Speeder, fixing some things in the back, when it took off by itself, and next thing they know they were in the Ghost Zone. And now they're crashed in there somewhere and want me to come help them."

Paulina frowned at him. It wasn't the news she was expecting. "Huh. Weird."

"Yeah. Weird." Danny was giving her a pointed, suspicious look, one she wasn't sure why he was giving her. "You know what's weirder?" Paulina blinked at him, wondering why he was still giving her that look and shook her head. "Paulina was the one who crashed it."

Even though she knew Danny was watching her carefully, trying to gauge her reaction, she tried to make her face remain as blank as possible. However, on the inside, she was falling apart. Sam had gone in there alone. Sam could've been killed. Worse, _Paulina_ could've been killed, because it was her body stuck in there!

She didn't know when her breath sped up, but it sped up even more when Danny narrowed his eyes at her and stepped closer to her, standing directly in front of her. "Does this, by any chance, have anything to do with this morning, Sam?"

Paulina swallowed nervously. She didn't say anything, afraid her voice would squeak.

"Oh, wait, that's right," Danny had a dark expression on his face as he stared at her. "You won't respond to Sam because that's not your name. Right, _Paulina_?"

* * *

"The engine is fried," Tucker shook his head at the Specter Speeder as smoke came out of the engine. "I can try and get it back up and running while Danny comes to get us, but it'll take time."

He looked up and noticed that no one was listening to him. For reasons beyond him, Paulina had been there when he and Jazz came up front, and she'd been so shocked by their presence that she accidently crashed the Specter Speeder. Now, she was pacing across the empty field they were in, the ground a stone that glowed like the moon.

Jazz was glaring at said pacing girl. "I know who you are, but I don't know who you _think_ you are to, not only break into my house, but take a very dangerous ghost ship and enter the Ghost Zone when you have no business into our family."

Tucker stood up and walked towards Sam as well. "What the hell were you_ doing,_ Paulina? Was this like an attempt at suicide?"

Sam snorted at him. "At least I get points for originality."

Jazz glared at her. "This isn't a joke! You could've gotten us all killed!"

"So, what," Tucker said exasperatedly, "you got bored from your perfect little life and decided that you wanted to have fun? Tormenting other people wasn't enough for you?"

Sam flinched. She was already having a really bad day, and her best friends yelling at her for being someone she wasn't was only making her feel worse.

She realized that Tucker was still yelling at her when she'd spaced off. "–_thinking_, Paulina? That you would sneak into the ghost boy's house, get your hands on his stuff, and look, there's a shiny thing in his basement, let's explore that too! Are you willing to explain yourself, Paulina?"

Sam didn't answer him.

That wasn't her name.

"_Paulina_! Don't just think that we're going to let you off – are you even listening to me? _Paulina_."

"Stop calling me that!" Sam snapped, unable to take it anymore. She turned to her best friend and glared at him, and she tried to hide the fact that she had tears in her eyes.

"What else am I supposed to call you?" Tucker folded his arms across his chest and glared at her, getting really tired of her attitude. "That's your name, isn't it?"

"_No_!" Sam yelled. "I'm not Paulina, okay? I'm Sam. _I'm Sam_."

* * *

**A/N:** NOW we're getting somewhere... ;)

Revieww xx


	19. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP

* * *

**Chapter 19**

Tucker and Jazz blinked at her outburst. Sam seemed to be in shock about it too, but the shocked expression was overridden by one of absolute misery.

Tucker wasn't buying it, though. He'd known Paulina for his entire life, and he knew how much of an actress she was. She'd do and say anything to weasel herself out of a situation. He shook his head at her. "I don't believe you."

"Then you're an idiot," she snapped. "You've been noticing something weird going on with me – the Sam that sat every day at your lunch table – but you just couldn't figure out what it was. I'm telling you what it was. That girl _wasn't me_. That girl was Paulina. But I'm not Paulina. _I'm Sam_."

Tucker scoffed. "Yeah. Okay. And I'm Spiderman."

Sam glared at him with all her might. "In fifth grade, when Dash had beaten you up so bad you had to go to the nurse, you were so brave that some girls started to like you and for once it was you in the spotlight, not Danny. But what no one knows is that that night I caught you crying by the monkey bars in the park, and you made me promise not to say anything to anyone. I know when you say you got 'urgent mayor stuff' to do, you're actually just playing _Doomed_. And I know that you've had the hugest crush on Jazz for ages, and that's how I know that the two of you weren't 'working on the Speeder' like you'd told Danny."

Sam finished her entire speech, quite proud of herself. But nothing beat the relief that washed over her as Tucker's eyes widened so much she was afraid his sockets would fall off. "_Sam_?"

Sam was just getting exasperated with the guy – didn't she _just _tell him that? She couldn't help but sarcastically retort, "_No_, I'm Neil Armstrong and currently my angry vengeful ghost is possessing this puny human being for pedophilic reasons, even though I'm not a pedophile. _What do you think, dumbass?_"

"Holy shit," Tucker said, "it is you. Only the Sam Manson I know responds with that level of sarcasm."

"So, wait," Jazz spoke before Sam could choke the techno-geek. "_How_, exactly, did you end up in this girl's body?"

Here came the part that Sam didn't want to face, but she was too messed up to care. "Desiree, that's how."

"But shouldn't a wish have been involved–"

"That's not important!" Sam snapped. "I just want to find that stupid ghost so I could get back into my own body."

"Great, it's great that you have a plan," Tucker said sarcastically, then he looked around at their surroundings, at the endless abyss of greenery and vortexes around them. "But it sucks."

* * *

Paulina wasn't used to having short legs.

Well, obviously, Sam's legs were anything but short. Paulina's were just longer – as long as Danny's legs even. But Sam's were short compared to both of theirs.

That's why, when Danny was stalking in front of her, on their way to Fenton Works, she was having problems keeping up.

She wanted to yell at him to slow down, but refrained, knowing she would only make things worse.

He found out. Paulina couldn't believe he found out.

She couldn't believe she actually had sex with him.

It's not like she meant to… it was sort of an 'in-the-heat-of-the-moment' thing. When she'd called him over, she'd only meant to tell him the truth about their situation. Okay, sure, she did want to hurt Sam, but not like this. She only wanted to pin the body switch on _her_ and watch as it hurt Danny and her when she found out what she'd done.

She hadn't meant it.

Paulina shook her head at herself. She was doing it again. Doing bad things and then making lame excuses for why she did them. _I was mad. I was hurt. I didn't mean it._

She _did _mean it.

She _did_ have sex with Danny.

She _did_ betray Sam.

But she hadn't anticipated the consequences.

True, that morning, when Sam had walked into the kitchen and beheld the sight in front of her, Paulina felt smug. She felt powerful, that she had the ability to render someone so speechless. She felt even more powerful when Sam started throwing punches at her, because she knew that no matter what Sam did to her, it wouldn't hurt as much as what Paulina had done.

But then the power ended, and all Paulina was left with was guilt.

The guilt was clawing at her insides, so that it physically hurt. She didn't know what to do with that feeling; she seldom felt guilty. Even if she knew what she was doing was bad, she felt guilty for a little while but then did it again anyway, because that was just who she was.

This time was different. She didn't think the guilt would ever go away.

She didn't think Sam's hurt would ever go away either, so that was why she didn't think she would ever be forgiven.

Even though Paulina hadn't done anything during their walk, Danny suddenly spun around, having been a few paces in front of her, and glared. "You don't even have anything to say for yourself?"

At first, Paulina was shocked by his outburst, but then she recovered quickly. "What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? I doubt that would make a difference."

Danny was shaking his head at her, and she didn't think he was even aware that he was. "Why would you do something like this? _Why_? What could you possibly hope to gain?"

"I don't know," Paulina said in frustration. "Sam broke it all off with Dash. _All _of it. It was the only thing that mattered to me, regardless of how messed up it was. She had no right to do that."

"You changed her hair," Danny glared. "You had no right to do that either."

"It's just hair," Paulina scoffed. "And I made it _better_."

"So when she tries to make something in _your_ life better, which I'm sure is what she was trying to do–"

"She was trying to hurt me!" Paulina burst. "She knew how much the thing I had with Dash mattered to me."

"And you know how much _I _mattered to her," Danny said. "You didn't just steal me from her. You stole her virginity." Danny bit the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from strangling the girl. "Mine too."

Paulina shook her head slowly. "I didn't mean for that to happen. You kissed me first, remember?"

Sure he was going to lose it any time now, he whipped his head away from her and continued walking towards his house again. His hands were curled into fists by his sides and he was hissing under his breath. He could not believe what had just happened. He couldn't believe that Paulina had been in Sam's body for this entire time.

And he couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed.

Now that he was paying attention, he saw the slight differences. Sam never played with her hair like that. The way she walked was always slow and with purpose – she didn't sashay her hips like she owned the place. He replayed it over and over in his mind and wanted to punch himself. He'd _heard_ someone – who was apparently _his_ Sam – call her Paulina, yet he _still_ didn't figure it out.

And now, looking at the face of the girl that he loves, he only felt disgust at the person he knew was actually hiding behind that face.

After a few more strides in silence, Paulina finally burst, "I'm sorry, okay? _I'm sorry_. I don't know what to do."

"That's great, Paulina," Danny shook his head, not looking at her. "You're sorry. Wow, that's awesome."

Paulina wanted to snap at the tone of his voice, but she bit her tongue, knowing he was right. He didn't say anything else for a while, and neither did she.

They neared Fenton Works, but before they walked towards the door, Paulina tentatively asked, "Danny? Do you think she'll ever forgive me?"

The Ghost Boy didn't even hesitate. "No."

* * *

"Okay, Sam," Tucker ducked as a ray of fire flew past him. "Your plan _really _sucks."

"Just work faster and stop complaining!" Sam yelled back at him.

Their undisturbed crash didn't stay undisturbed for long. Tucker had been trying to tinker with the Speeder as they waited for Danny, but his slight tinkering turned into rushed fixing when suddenly, a dragon was billowing fire at them, claiming that "she wants to go to the ball!".

Thankfully, there was always ghost equipment in the Speeder, so Jazz was grappling with the Fenton Ghost Fisher to irritate the dragon ghost, grabbing her from around her neck to try and stop her from flying. While this was ineffective at stopping her from doing anything, it held her back from crashing into Tucker while he worked on the Specter Speeder.

Sam, however, had called dibs on a more useful gadget, and was using the Fenton Bazooka to fire rays at the dragon whenever it tried to assault them.

"Didn't we already deal with this one?" Sam yelled at no one in particular. "Like a gazillion times?!"

"How's it going over there, Tucker?" Jazz's fishing thread came catapulting back and crashing into the rod, leaving marks on Jazz's hands, but she barely noticed. "I hope it's better than us!"

"I need help!" Tucker grunted. "I only have two hands."

Sam looked over at Jazz and gestured with her head towards Tucker. "Go, I can handle this."

Jazz gave her a brisk nod and then ran over to Tucker. The dragon noticed the assault narrowing down to only Sam, so it glared at her and screeched, "_I want to go to the ball_!"

"You know who could make that happen?" Sam said, dodging the breath of fire it let out. "A little ghost genie called Desiree. Maybe you could go find her!"

For some weird reason, what Sam said only made it angrier, because it breathed more fire at her. Sam fired from the bazooka multiple times, but the ectoplasmic rays only infuriated it even more.

"Tucker!" Sam dodged another fire blast. "Tell me you're almost done!"

"I'm almost done!" he flashed a thumbs up at Sam, but to Jazz he muttered, "We're going to die. Here, hold this."

He shoved a square thing into her hands with wires poking out of it. "What's this?"

"I don't know," Tucker rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "But I'm hoping it's not important."

"Oh God, okay," Jazz face-palmed herself and wondered why she ever liked this idiot.

"Desiree!" Sam got desperate. "You stupid ghost, where are you!"

"Yes, Sam," even though she was too busy fighting for her life, she could see Tucker rolling his eyes at her. "_That's_ going to work. Also, if I yell that I wish Danny would hurry up and get here already, that would surely work too, right?"

Right at that moment, the strangest thing happened. The dragon was about to bellow more fire at Sam, when suddenly, it was engulfed in a blue light and started shrinking and shrinking backwards until it disappeared.

Right into the thermos Danny was holding out.

Tucker blinked. "Huh. I guess it would work."

Danny landed onto the stone ground, and Sam's eyes moved from him to the girl at his side. Paulina looked like she was having a panic attack, looking at the surroundings with wild eyes, terrified. Her skin was pale – well, paler than usual, since Sam was already very pale – and her lips were quivering in fear.

"Oh, hey, Paulina," Tucker smiled friendlily at the Latina. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Even though she was terrified, Paulina managed to glare at him. "You know what, techno-geek? Why don't you just shut–"

She cut herself off as she screamed when a green mist wrapped around her body and she floated up in the air. The same mist knocked Danny down so that he couldn't immediately react, and Sam stared up in horror.

Desiree appeared at Paulina's side as the Latina screamed in horror, gazing down at the endless void beneath her. Desiree sighed and stared at the sight in front of her. "You called?"

Tucker gave Sam a bewildered look. "Guess that worked too."

"Yes," Sam glared at her. "I wish I had my body back!"

"M-Me too," Paulina stuttered.

Desiree rolled her eyes, as if the girls had just stopped a party she was having. "Well, if you want to be lame about it, fine. Your heart's desire is my command…"


	20. Chapter 20

**Author's Note:** Um ahem. I'm reallyyy sorry about the wait - usually I update after two-three days, because I either have the chapter already written or because I naturally write fast because the chapters are short, but for some reason I just could NOT write this one. I'd written it directly after I'd written chapter 19, but I hated it so much I just couldn't post it. I'd had writer's block and decided that I'd just post it and stuff, but I couldn't do it because it was so bad. Right now, I rewrote more than half of it and one chapter became two because there were so many things I'd neglected. But now it's finally done and posted. Sorry if it seems rushed at some points.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 20**

Sam felt weird. No, she didn't just feel weird – she felt weightless. The ground was no longer below her feet. She blinked, and gasped when she realized she was staring down at the terrain, staring down at Tucker and Jazz by the Specter Speeder, staring down at Danny…

Staring down at Paulina. _Actually_ Paulina.

Even though she was being dangled in the air and possibly to her impending doom, she couldn't help grinning. "Yes!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Desiree looked disinterested in her victory. "Whatever. On to the horror and screams now."

"Oh, no you don't," Sam scoffed. "I'm not done yet."

"What do you think I am, a wish-granting factory?" Desiree glared at her. "No, you are going to die now–"

"I wish Paulina was bald."

Desiree closed her mouth, and an interested smirk settled there instead. "In that case…"

Paulina shrieked, drawing Sam's attention back down to her. "I wish I had my hair back!" Desiree rolled her eyes, but a flick of her fingers later and Paulina's head was full of hair again. "Sam, cut it out!"

"I wish my hair was black and long again," Sam ignored the Latina and continued on with her wishes.

Desiree rolled her eyes at that one, but a _poof_ later and Sam could feel her hair scrape the tops of her shoulders again, back to the way it was before Paulina tampered with it.

"And for my last wish," Sam glared down at Paulina, but lowered her voice so that only Desiree could hear, "I wish I had my virginity back."

"Huh," Desiree turned thoughtful. "I don't think that's possible. I can't bring back things from the dead, and your virginity is dead. Does that apply here?"

"Fine," Sam gritted her teeth. "Then I wish whatever happened between the bitch and Danny last night never happened."

"If I were you, I'd accept the fact that I was betrayed and become a ghost genie, like I did." Desiree stated, but after the look that Sam gave her, she rolled her eyes and added, "Whatever. Your wish is my command."

Sam didn't know whether it worked or not, because she didn't feel any different whatsoever. However, when she glanced down at Danny and Paulina, they were blinking in confusion and frowning. She didn't know whether Desiree could actually take things back from time as if they'd never happened, but she didn't know what else to do and hope it had worked.

"I can't take things back from time and undo them; what happened, happened. _But_, since it wasn't actually _you_, Danny will remember doing whatever it is he did with the other girl. And the other girl will remember that too, that she did whatever she did in her own body. You didn't do whatever the hell happened. You're still a virgin." Desiree gave her a sympathetic look. "But you still got betrayed. Sorry."

Sam was flabbergasted at why Desiree was being so nice to her – regardless of the fact that she was still being held in the air by the ghost genie – and then remembered that the man that she loved had cast her out because of his jealous wife. She didn't really remember, but it was something like that.

Even though Sam wished she could take back time and prevent this entire switch from happening, she was grateful for the little thing she got back: her virginity.

"Now," Desiree drew Sam's attention back to her with that, "onto the terror and such."

Sam didn't know what she meant, but soon understood when the green tendrils unwrapped themselves from around her body and she was falling into oblivion. She didn't even have time to scream before she fell into someone's arms and they carried her back onto the terrain.

Once her feet were back on solid ground, she looked up at Danny's glowing green eyes. He seemed to have finally seen her, and started shaking his head, ignoring the angry ghost floating above them. "Sam…"

"Guys!" they both looked over at Tucker, who was racing into the Specter Speeder as Jazz pulled Paulina in behind them. "Come on!"

Danny and Sam ran towards the Speeder as Desiree tried to launch more of her tendrils at them. "Wait!" she was yelling after them as they all squeezed into the Speeder. "That's it? That's the fight you're putting up? Where are you going? Hey! _Come back here, I'm not done with you_!"

Halfway through the chase, Desiree must've realized that she had better things to do than chase after them, because as they neared the entrance of the Ghost Portal back into the real world, she was long gone.

Tucker parked the Specter Speeder in the lab as if nothing had happened, and the group got out of the Speeder. "Well," Tucker broke the silence when they all stared at each other silently. "That was interesting."

Sam shook her head slightly and started stalking away, up the stairs and towards the front door. Danny changed back to human and threw the thermos at Tucker as he followed her, and Paulina, after she stood awkwardly with the techno-geek and Jazz, followed them as well.

Sam had already made it out the front door and down the street by the time Danny and Paulina caught up with her. "Sam, wait," Danny called out after her.

The last thing Sam wanted to do was wait. The slight victory she'd felt that she was finally back in her own body and that Desiree was able to do some abra-cadabra and erase last night from every happening was overshadowed by anger again. So that was why she didn't stop or turn around when Danny called out to her.

She halted, however, when Paulina said, "Sam, please, just hear me out."

Sam gaped in disbelief and turned back to the Latina. She couldn't believe that Paulina thought she had a right to say _anything_ after that morning. She stalked over to her with an expression of rage on her face, wanting to strangle her.

Paulina, however, mistook her pause for encouragement and started babbling. "I know that no matter how many times I say I'm sorry, it'll never be enough. But I am, Sam. I _am_ sorry. I'm so–"

Paulina was cut off. Sam had finally given in to her anger, but she didn't strangle her.

She slapped her.

Paulina gasped at the impact of palm on cheek. Her hands flew up automatically to her cheek, and she looked back at Sam in shock as tears pooled into her eyes. That morning, she'd been shoved onto a glass coffee table, punched, kicked, got her hair pulled at, got glass onto her skin and hair, pinched, strangled, and a few moments before she was hijacked into the air and above a drop to her death – but none of that hurt more than the slap she'd just received.

Sam gave the Latina one last look, but it said everything that needed to be said. Paulina blinked at her, tried not to cry, but said nothing. She finally realized that words would do her no good. Not for anything she'd done.

Sam turned away from her and continued walking away. This time, Danny didn't try to call out to her. He turned to Paulina, who looked back in shock, and went ghost. He also gave Paulina one last look, which sent even more knives into the Latina, and flew away.

* * *

Throughout her entire walk home, the only thing Sam wished she could do was stop thinking. She wanted to forget things ever happened. She wanted to forget the entire switch. She wanted to forget what Paulina had done.

But she couldn't.

Now that she was back in her own body, she could recognize the things that she'd missed subconsciously when she was in Paulina's body. Her pace was faster, even if her legs were shorter than Paulina's. She felt lighter, her body weighing a lot less than Paulina's, with her big everything, apparently. Her hair wasn't brushing against her elbows and making her uncomfortable with heat; her feet weren't constantly blistered and hurting her from all the heels. Sam appreciated feeling back at home.

She didn't want to think about Paulina or Paulina's body anymore, because that only made her think of what Paulina had done again.

And then she realized something very important.

Desiree may have altered the events of the previous night, restoring Sam's virginity… But not Danny's.

Sam halted in place and covered her mouth with her palm in shock at the next realization.

If she hadn't antagonized Paulina and broke her up with Dash, none of this would've happened. But now it wasn't just Paulina having sex with Danny that was the problem; it wasn't the fact that Paulina took her virginity away. She had it back now. She was a virgin again.

But Danny wasn't.

And it was all her fault.

* * *

**A/N:** So... Here it is! I like it a lot better now x3. I hope the wait was worth it!

Revieww x


	21. Chapter 21

**Author's Note: **I'm only updating really fast because I travel to Alexandria the day after tomorrow and there won't be wifi there..

Oh and also because you are awesome readers and deserve fast updates :3. So here you go!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Chapter 21**

Sam was only slightly surprised when Danny phased into her room without knocking. She really didn't think he'd stop chasing her, trying to get her to talk to him. But the truth was, she didn't want to talk. She didn't want to talk again for the rest of her life, because talking was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. She babbled and made a stupid wish. She babbled and made the worst friend who turned out to be her worst enemy. Babbling did her no good. So she wouldn't do it anymore.

And besides. She couldn't face him. Not after what her actions had caused him.

"Sam, just talk to me," Danny said. The Goth was shaking her head, resting her back against the wall opposite her bed. All she'd wanted to do was crawl into bed, get underneath her covers and never come out, but she wanted to have the covers and pillows cleaned and the mattress burned and a new one bought because she would not sleep on a place where she was betrayed. On the place where Danny was betrayed.

"_Sam_," she'd been avoiding making eye contact with him, but after ten minutes of him pestering her, she finally looked up and met his eyes.

She'd known that if she'd looked up into his eyes, she'd start talking. "It's my fault."

Danny hadn't expected her to say that. "What's your fault?"

She shook her head and looked away. "Everything." She took a deep breath, and continued. "Earlier that night, I'd called Dash and ended whatever was between him and Paulina. Even though ultimately it was a move that would push her life to the best, I still did it out of revenge. Paulina had tampered with my life on many occasions, and I was so sick of it, and of not doing the same, so I just.. I'd reached my end point. But it was stupid and idiotic and if I hadn't done it then–"

"Sam," Danny was gaping at her. "You didn't tell Paulina to call me afterwards. You didn't tell her to do what she did. That wasn't your fault."

"No, but it was," Sam chuckled at the situation she was in humorlessly. "When it's you and Paulina Sanchez, you always have to be the better person, because she won't occupy that place. When I did that with Dash, I wasn't being the better person."

"Alright, fine," Danny seemed too frustrated with her at this point. "So say you did what you did. And it was bad. But what Paulina did was worse. You can't compare what you did to her to what she did to you."

"I'm comparing what she did to me to what I did to you," Sam said angrily. "I have my virginity back. Paulina, no matter how powerful she thinks she is, couldn't tamper with that. But what about you? Danny, she played you – she played us both – but you were the one who ended up getting hurt. She stole your virginity in the end and that was _my _fault."

"Listen to me," Sam was so surprised that she hadn't even noticed the strides that Danny had taken to her. He'd grasped her arms and was staring at her eyes intently. "Do you hear yourself? What you're saying is _exactly _what she wanted. She wanted to hurt _me_ to hurt _you_, and I won't let her do that. I don't care that the wish only worked for you – I don't care that she stole my virginity. I only care about _you_. And if the wish worked on you, then I don't care if it didn't work on me."

Sam was shaking her head throughout his entire speech, because she couldn't believe after everything that happened and after everything she'd he could still maintain his selflessness when it came to protecting her. "That's not fair for you, Danny."

Danny shook his head right back at her. "I don't care."

"No. _No_." Sam shoved him away, glaring at him. She was getting pissed. Danny shouldn't be the person to fall under the gun each and every single time. He already got beat up and battered when it came to ghosts – he shouldn't end up being the person hurt when it came to her too.

But Sam knew her boyfriend, and she knew that no matter what she said, she wouldn't make him change his mind. She was getting angrier and angrier as she thought about it – angrier _at _him and _with _him. She knew that snapping at him would only make things worse, but she welcomed the words as they flowed out of her mouth. "You should've noticed."

"I know."

"No, Danny," she glared at him. "_You should have noticed_."

"Don't you think I know that?" Danny glared at her as well. "I _did_ notice that something was up, but how the hell was I supposed to know that this was it? Sam, you should've told me the minute it happened. You should've told me."

Sam sighed, stuck. "I know."

"You know?" Danny frowned at her. "What kind of answer is that?"

"The only one I've got," Sam told him.

Danny shook his head at her. "What I don't understand is why? Why didn't you tell me?"

Sam sighed in frustration and looked away. She started pacing around in her own little bubble, not knowing what to do with the situation.

She looked back up at him with a pained expression. "You slept with Paulina."

"I thought it was you," Danny said.

"My fault too," Sam sighed, resting her back on the wall again and banging her head against it.

"Yes, it was," Sam looked at him with a look of confusion at his next words. "What kind of girlfriend doesn't tell her boyfriend something like this?"

Even though his response was so unlike him, so unlike the Danny she'd known for all her life and the Danny who was just defending her moments ago, Sam glared at him right back. "What kind of boyfriend doesn't even notice when his girlfriend isn't his girlfriend? And what kind of boyfriend sleeps with someone else other than his girlfriend!"

"I didn't know!" Danny said. "Because you didn't tell me that she wasn't my girlfriend."

Sam shook her head at him. "We make a pretty awful couple. Maybe we shouldn't even be boyfriend and girlfriend if all of this managed to slip by us."

"You're right," Danny glared even harder. "Maybe we should break up."

"No, it's done, it's over," Sam shrugged, not meeting his eyes. "We're over."

Sam inwardly sighed. When she looked back up at Danny, he was staring at her in disbelief, slightly shaking his head at her. Sam was about to say something – she didn't even remember what it was now – when Danny's lips were on hers.

He cupped her cheeks and brought her even closer to him and kissed her – _really_ kissed, her, as if they'd been separated for a long time and had finally been reunited. And in a way, they had.

Sam lost herself. She'd almost forgotten how good it was to kiss Danny, to feel his hands on her, to feel his touch on her skin. She hungrily roamed her hands and felt for the familiarity of the muscles on his arms, of the hair on his head, as he did the same, moving his hands from her cheeks to her waist and bringing her body tight with his, not ever letting her go again. Sam could only think of one thing at one point or another:

He tasted so much better than Dash.

She didn't really blame Paulina for wanting to make out with Danny all the time, at the moment.

Thinking of Paulina made her wake up. "Okay, okay," she managed to peel herself away from him, knowing that kissing probably wasn't going to fix anything – though they could try – and looked up at Danny. "Okay, wait, wait. I don't want to know about what happened in this room between you and Paulina, I do _not_ want to know. But just tell me this." She paused, trying to sum up the courage to ask. "Was it good?"

She didn't know what she wanted to hear. She didn't want to hear that it was bad and then think that something was wrong with her, but she didn't want to hear that it was good either. Danny snorted and tried to stifle a laugh at her question, but his expression turned thoughtful. "Um, well..."

"No," Sam shook her head, changing her mind when dread welled up in her stomach. "You know what? No. I don't want to know."

Danny shrugged. "You could always find out for yourself…"

Sam raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh, really?"

Danny gave her a mischievous flick with his eyebrows, and then his hands were on her ass, grabbing her and lifting her so that she was forced to wrap her legs around his waist and grab onto his neck in surprise. "I'm kind of an expert now, you know," he shrugged nonchalantly, which made her laugh.

"Okay, Casanova," she smirked at him. "Show me."

Danny was about to throw her onto the bed when she stopped him and said, "No, not there, _definitely_ not where the crime took place."

"Who told you it happened on your bed?" despite Sam's protests, Danny threw her down gently on the bed so that she landed on the pillows and crawled on top of her. "Apparently, the couch in your living room seemed more appealing to her."

"Ew!" even though Sam was genuinely disgusted, she couldn't help but laugh at the blank look on Danny's face. "I told you I didn't want to know!"

* * *

"Wow."

Sam was staring at her ceiling in absolute disbelief. Her entire body was still tingling, and her heart was still racing, and she was still slightly panting. Danny was lying next to her in the same position, and her silk cover was draping over them haphazardly.

They stayed silent for a long time afterwards, both of them lost in thought. Sam frowned, and then turned to him. "Did we just solve our problem with sex?"

Danny shrugged, not looking at her. "Apparently that's what happened."

Sam looked back up at the ceiling again, frowning even more. She turned to Danny again after a few more moments of silence. "You do know that we still have a problem we need to solve, right?"

"Yeah." Danny finally turned away from the ceiling to look at her. "But I'm up for ignoring it for a few more hours if you are."

Even though every rational part of Sam's brain was telling her to be responsible, get up, get dressed, and talk through the problem again, she grinned at her boyfriend. "Oh, I'm definitely up for it."

* * *

That night, when the door bell rang and Sam opened it to find Paulina standing there, she rolled her eyes and started closing the door in her face.

"Sam, please just wait," Paulina put her foot within the crook of the door to the doorframe, stopping the door from closing. "I just want to talk."

"Paulina–"

"I heard your last wish," Paulina cut her off quickly. "And I know how it worked. It still happened, but it happened when I was in my body. And since it did… You have your virginity back."

Sam got so angry at the way she assumed things were okay that she couldn't help but snap, "Did you forget something?" When Paulina blinked at her weird response, Sam added, "That would be your indiscretion. And the fact that you _still_ stole Danny's virginity. And the fact that we were friends and you slept with my boyfriend."

"You broke me up with mine!" Paulina had only wanted to make things right, but when Sam's tone started getting aggressive, so did Paulina's. "And over what? Hair? Hair that you managed to change back, by the way?"

"What I did may have been wrong, and because I'm a grown up and own up to my mistakes, I apologize for that," even though it really pained her, Sam blurted the apology out through gritted teeth – and even though it killed her, she meant it. "But what I did was not irreversible. You could easily go to Dash right now, strip all your clothes and everything would be back to normal. What about what you did to me? What about what you did to Danny? I may have deserved it, even though I still didn't, but Danny definitely did _not_ deserve that."

Paulina grunted in frustration. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry!" She closed her eyes and sighed, trying to calm herself down. "Can I just come in so that we can talk this out?"

"Oh," Sam raised both her eyebrows at her. "You just want to _talk_? No, Paulina, for the first time in your life, you're going to stop talking and start listening. We are not friends, Paulina. I thought we were, but we're not, apparently. I have nothing more to say to you. I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear from you, and I don't want to know you."

Paulina swallowed the lump in her throat, wanting to protest, to say anything to make the conversation last longer than this, but refrained. "I really am sorry."

"Good," Sam didn't say anything else before she slammed the door in her face.

* * *

**A/N: **Guys. GUYS. NO. (This isn't the ending, that's not what I'm talking about). I'm getting a lot of reviews that see Sam as the bad guy here. That she's the one to blame for everything. But GUYS. Have you not read anything through the chapters I'd written before? If you'd review, the only person who was the bad guy was Paulina - not that I want to pin everything on Paulina, but just bear with me for a bit - and Sam was patient with her, accepted and forgave her mistakes, gave her so many chances, and yet Paulina STILL didn't stop meddling in her life, disregarding the insane amount of times that Sam asked her not to, regardless of Paullina's intention. No one can be patient forever, so obviously you're going to break at one point or another. Sam didn't do what she did over HAIR. She did it over EVERYTHING ELSE too. And YES, Paulina DID grow up as a person, and she did learn... But she still falls back into her same actions. If Paulina had really grown, she wouldn't have slept with Danny, whether she was angry or not. I'm not saying this as the author, I'm saying this as any person reading the story. And in the part where Paulina called Danny, it was written that she wanted to hurt Sam deliberately and fully. What Sam did, okay, it was BAD, but you can defend it more than what Paulina had done. And like Sam said, what she'd done was not irreversible. What Paulina did wasn't something they could talk about over tea and then end. Paulina didn't just sleep with Sam's boyfriend. She slept with Sam's boyfriend in Sam's body while they were both virgins. That's kind of a big deal.

Blekh. Sorry. Had to rant xD. But you Sam haters actually presented me with some great ideas, so thank you for that! I hope I'm not disappointing you too much x3.


	22. Epilogue

**Author's Note:** Umm... So I guess you're kind of surprised that this is the epilogue because I just noticed that I hadn't mentioned that the previous chapter was, in fact, the last chapter.

Don't throw rocks at me yet! (Though you are allowed to once we reach the end). I'm travelling today to Alexandria and will be on the road shortly and there's no wifi in Alexandria so I'm actually kind of doing you a favor *rocks still get thrown*

Anyway... Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own DP.

* * *

**Epilogue**

"_Mom_!" Sam grimaced as she tried to push her mother out of her room that morning. "I don't want to have the sex talk with you!"

"But Sammy, you need to understand the implications–"

"I do understand," Sam dared a peak behind the door to give her mom a pointed look. "Sex makes babies, I get it!"

She finally closed the door to her bedroom, and then leaned her back on it in relief. She listened and tried to hear her mother outside of her door, and heard a slight sigh and then footsteps moving away.

She sighed in relief and then turned back to the room. "I'm sorry. This is like the fifth time this month this happened."

Danny turned visible again a few feet in front of her with a chuckle. "You gotta admire her persistence, though."

"The only thing I want to admire right now," Sam walked over to where Danny was standing and wrapped her arms around his neck, "is you."

She'd captured his lips with hers but he drew back before she could go further and unwrapped her arms from around his torso. "Tempting, but we have school in an hour."

"Being the responsible one is my job," Sam folded her arms across her chest with a pout.

"And being the pouter is mine," Danny chuckled at her expression. "Later, Sammy."

"Don't call me that!" Sam grunted in annoyance as he flew out of her window. "And give me my morning kiss back!"

They had a Chemistry test at school that day, but Sam was lucky enough to not be in chemistry with Danny and Tucker, so they were doing enough worrying for the three of them had Sam been in the class with them. They were at Sam's locker, and while they were busy taking the exam, Sam would have free track, where she would work on her English homework.

"So if we add magnesium to oxygen–"

Sam cut Tucker off before he could continue. "There is no such thing as adding magnesium to oxygen. How are you going to add anything to air?"

"You burn the magnesium," Danny corrected, and Sam smiled at him proudly. However, that smile faded when he continued and said, "And then it burns out just like any metal?"

Sam banged her head against her locker and groaned. "I pity the teacher who's going to grade your papers."

"What the hell, man?" Tucker slammed the revision papers he was holding against the back of Danny's head. "You told me you would get some notes from Sam last night and then come over to my place and we'd go over them together but you went AWOL." He turned to Sam. "So did you. Why weren't any of you picking up your phones?"

Sam and Danny shared a look and a silent flashback passed between them. The tangle of bed sheets. Violet-scented candles. A trail of kisses down unspoken areas of skin.

"I was fighting ghosts all night and crashed the minute I was home."

"I was having a long, meaningful conversation with my mom."

Both Tucker and Danny turned to give her a look. When they resumed giving her the same look, she shrugged and scoffed. "Don't you have a test in two minutes?"

Tucker shook his head darkly at both of them. "My F is on your conscience."

As the bell rang, he started heading to class, leaving a chuckling Danny and Sam behind.

"Good luck on your test!" Sam yelled after her boyfriend after he gave her a chaste kiss and started catching up to Tucker.

Danny snorted. "I don't need luck. I need a miracle."

Sam inwardly chuckled and started heading towards the courtyard. Absentmindedly she found herself looking back at Danny, who was disappearing around the hall with the crowd towards his next class, and couldn't stop the pang of guilt she felt.

Ever since the virginity thing, Sam would always find random moments in the day where guilt would hit her like it was fresh. Even though she didn't want to, she couldn't help think about what she'd done to Danny, and it made her feel worse every single time. Sometimes, when these thoughts hit her while she was with her boyfriend, she'd blurt out an "I'm so sorry" before she could stop herself, and Danny would have to hold her and comfort her and tell her it was alright.

But even though Danny told her it was fine, she still felt his pain. She could tell that he was as scarred as she was by the Latina, both of them tricked and screwed over by the same person. Danny never liked to talk about it again, and whenever Sam brought it up, he told her that what was done was done and that he was over talking about it.

Sam sighed to herself as she walked through the empty halls of Casper High and refrained from saying 'I wish'.

* * *

Sam decided she would spend her free track in the courtyard where it was nice out – and by nice out Sam meant not sunny and there was a gloomy cloudy atmosphere in the sky. She'd gotten out her English books and started working.

She didn't even notice when Paulina was walking towards her table.

It had been almost a month since the entire switch and its events had taken place. Paulina had stayed true to her words and hadn't tried to contact Sam once, which Sam was thankful for. Seeing the Latina in the halls was bad enough – actually talking to her would put Sam over her edge all over again. Weirdly though Paulina hadn't antagonized her once like she always did – whenever she heard the words "Goth freak" directed at her were always from a football player or a cheerleader or any of the A-listers, but she never looked up once and found that it was Paulina who was sneering at her.

She didn't think much of it, knowing that the Latina was probably too smart to stoop back to her old stunts after everything they'd been through. But even though Sam was grateful there was one less person who antagonized her, she still felt her stomach clench at the sight of Paulina in the hallway.

So that was why, when the Latina sat down in front of Sam on the bench table, Sam's instant reaction was for her expression to darken and for her to automatically start collecting her things to get up and leave.

"Wait, come on," Paulina gave her an exasperated look. "It's been almost a month, Sam. You can spare me a few minutes." When Sam only continued to glare at her, Paulina sighed, and added, "Please."

Even though the last thing Sam wanted was to talk to her, she sighed, rolled her eyes and sat back down. "Fine. But make it quick."

Paulina nodded absentmindedly. "Um, so. How are you?" Sam only stared blankly at her, so Paulina refrained the urge to sigh and continued. "You seem alright. I watch you in the halls, laughing and playing. You seem happy."

"Um, okay," Sam gave her a look. "Aren't you like sacrificing your reputation to come and sit down with the Goth freak?"

"First, no one's here," Paulina scoffed. "And second, no, I'm not, because I don't do that anymore. This is what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Your reputation?"

"No," Paulina shook her head. "No. _Me_. I wanted to tell you that everything you said about me, _everything_, was true. Totally true."

When Paulina paused to gauge Sam's reaction, Sam raised her eyebrows at her sarcastically. "Was that not already established?"

Paulina shrugged. "I guess not. But it's been almost a month, and I've been piecing my life back together in that time, and day by day I'm hit with how completely right you were. I… I broke up with Dash. You were right to do that too, I realize that now. I'm not such a bitch anymore – well, okay, maybe I am _sometimes_, but only when the occasion warrants it. And I'm not mean to random people in the hallway just because they annoy me. I'm pretty sure you noticed that one."

Paulina took a deep breath, and continued on with her speech. "After the switch, I realized that something was very wrong with me. So I went to see a therapist." Sam couldn't help the surprised raise of her eyebrows at that, but said nothing, allowing the Latina to continue. "It took some time, but because I already talk a lot, we started putting the pieces together pretty quickly. I've always been spoilt, and I'm always at the top, and I always have to be the best person in anything, so I guess, subconsciously, I developed an envious nature and tried to do anything to stay the person on top – whether this is in things like cheerleading or being the best bitch. It's fucked up and confusing, but I'm working on it. I'm a lot better now, and I have a brand new perspective on things. But, Sam, I wouldn't have been able to achieve something like that if it wasn't for you."

Sam really didn't know what to think. She'd thought Paulina had changed before, but she was dead wrong, so she didn't want to make any assumptions now, especially since what Paulina could be saying could be lies, just like last time.

But no, Sam could see the honest look in her eyes. And she wasn't adding any of the dramatic moves she usually did when she was trying to get someone to feel sorry for her. Sam knew that she was genuine.

But she didn't know why Paulina was telling her all of that.

"That's great," Sam said weakly, not knowing what else she was supposed to say. "But why are you telling me this?"

"Oh!" Paulina blinked. "I'm sorry, that wasn't even my point. You know me, I could ramble on for days." She chuckled, but when Sam maintained her blank expression, Paulina cut herself off from laughing and cleared her throat awkwardly. "My point is that I'm getting my whole life back together piece by piece. But there's only one thing that's missing, Sam… Your forgiveness."

Sam blinked at her. "My forgiveness? You expect me to actually forgive you?"

"I know what I did was horrible," Paulina said, "I know that. And I am truly and deeply sorry for what I did to you and Danny. But I changed. I know I probably said that a lot, but this time it's for real. I'm a whole new person and I'm not the Paulina who slept with your boyfriend. I'm better now."

Sam sighed at the look Paulina was giving her – pleading, almost desperate, like she was groveling. And Paulina Sanchez does not grovel, feel remorse, guilt, or shame. But that was the girl sitting in front of her now, Sam realized that.

"So," Paulina bit her lip nervously. "Do you forgive me?"

Sam sighed, and she realized that her decision was already made up. "Paulina… I…"

* * *

**A/N:** ... am so sorry I'm doing this to you.

But not really.

See, I don't think there can be any other ending. When I started this story, it was for the purpose of making Sam and Paulina friends by the end. But as the events progressed and the sex thing happened... i just didn't see that happening anymore. However a lot of people have been making compelling points about how Paulina shouldn't remain the one to blame and Sam was as much to blame and everything, so I couldn't really make Sam not forgive her either. But if I were to make Sam forgive her, it would be for MY own reasons, not Sam's, so that wouldn't be fair to the story. However I do still believe that what Paulina did was unforgivable, but at this point whether Sam should say yes or no, I don't know.

So that's why, dear readers, I'm leaving you to decide what you want the ending to be. Do you want Sam to forgive Paulina and let bygones be bygones, or not?

Okay. You can throw rocks now.

OW!

Writing this story was the most fun EVER. I've never had this fun writing a story before, because the scenes just seemed to flow out of me. 80% of the events in this story weren't planned from the beginning and were spontaneously sprouted while I was writing it, and that is the best way a story should be written. So, I'm really sad to see it end, but at the same time it's such an accomplishment to me.

I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it, and thank you so much for your reviews and your support! I love youuu 3

See you next time xxxx

~Looka'sMagicHell~


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